The Deep Blue Sea Between Alabi and Me
A Social-Mediated Memoir
When borders closed in 2020, Tissa Salter and her Scottish Terrier, Alabi, found themselves stranded on opposite sides of the world. What followed became a story of determination, unexpected kindness, an international community—and the extraordinary bond between one woman and one small black dog.
The Story Behind the Book
In early 2020, Tissa Salter was teaching in China when the COVID-19 pandemic began to close borders and disrupt travel around the world. She left China while Alabi, her Scottish Terrier, remained behind. What was expected to be a temporary separation became something far more complicated as international travel shut down and getting one little dog halfway around the world became an extraordinary challenge.
Salter began sharing the unfolding story on Facebook. Friends, former students, colleagues, dog lovers, and eventually strangers followed along as she searched for a way to bring Alabi home. Their comments, advice, encouragement, humor, and acts of kindness became part of the story itself.
The Deep Blue Sea Between Alabi and Me grew from those exchanges. Told through narrative, photographs, social-media conversations, and the events unfolding around them, the memoir is both intensely personal and unexpectedly global—a record of separation and reunion, but also of the communities people create when circumstances leave them needing one another.
Inside the Memoir
The Deep Blue Sea Between Alabi and Me brings together the complete illustrated trilogy—Black Dog Down, Black Dog Stay, and Black Dog Home—in a single volume.
The memoir combines narrative with photographs, social-media exchanges, news events, and other visual elements that preserve not only what happened, but how the story unfolded in real time.
Black Dog Down — Separation
Black Dog Stay — Waiting
Black Dog Home — Reunion
The Complete Illustrated Trilogy
Available in full-color and black-and-white economy editions.
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