Imagine yourself traveling alone on a gloomy nighttime road. It is lonely and quiet all around. Suddenly, it happens. You encounter something small, cute, and innocent staring straight back at you: a young fox kit. Neither you nor it knows what to expect, but as you approach the creature with caution, a divine feeling of compassion and adoration pounces upon your heart.
Enter Dan Foxworthy. He finds himself in this exact scenario, deciding to keep the helpless creature for what he assumes to be a temporary affair. Once the fox snatches a firm hold upon his heart, Dan cannot resist keeping it longer and longer until the weeks become years and his entire family becomes robustly attached to the happy fox. While foxes are similar enough to, yet uniquely different from dogs, they discover taking care of their unconventional pet requires plenty of typical canine attention along with specialized vulpine care many would likely not know.
While raising the kit, Dan figures it must have a family out there somewhere. That presumed local fox family is the same one the Foxworthys had watched awhile for leisure, and they are worried sick for the welfare of their missing child. They had always lived challenging lives of basic wilderness subsistence, but now their lives had been turned upside down like never before. Despite the troubled past with his own parents, the kit's father struggles with fits of continual anxiety and self-blame, prompting his widowed mother to assure him repeatedly it is not his fault the kit escaped. The father will have to decide if he accepts that or not, and quickly, for unseen enemies are looming, jeopardizing all he holds dear.
Determined to keep their fox as long as possible, the Foxworthys encounter many hostile threats to their pet, from simple household hazards to power-hungry authority institutions. However, none exists greater than a vengeful hunter with a dark secret and a penchant for killing foxes. Infuriated by his only meaningful friendship fading, this man eventually hears of Dan's harboring a fox and decides that he will soon take matters into his own hands. Over time, each side becomes increasingly frustrated with the other and desperation sets in, culminating in a battle of wits between both men and their opposing canine companions, each seeking to outfox the other. Will Dan and his precious pet emerge victorious, or will the dogged hunter have it his way instead?
Join them all in this fluffy tale-a clever twist on the common trope of a man and his dog from both human and animal perspectives-as they discover joy and heartache alike along the never-ending adventure of their lives!