Moritz, the subject of the new book.

“There's such a powerful story of an artist being able to create such beauty in the midst of this dark disease spreading throughout her body,” he said. “She has such light and beauty that she is able to transform that into art. You can see the power of art in the world.

“She captured kindness in the illustrations. It's a direct experience.”

Schieber is the author of “Nose to Nose,” about his experiences with his Bernese mountain dog Moritz working as a therapy dog, and of a children's book about Moritz, “A Gift to Share,” published last year. He had his new story in mind two years ago when he ran across “Spotted Bear: A Rocky Mountain Folktale” in a bookstore. Written by Rappe-Flowers' mother, Hanneke Ippisch, the book is filled with Hedvig's illustrations. It won the pair a National Outdoor Book Award in 1999.

“As soon as I saw it, I bought it,” Schieber said.

Then he called the illustrator and asked if she'd work on his book.

She was too busy, she said.

Last spring, he called again.

She was sick, she said. He'd have to be patient. She'd do it, unless something intervened.

“Something told me to go ahead with it,” Schieber said. “I had doubts that the book would ever be finished. But there was something that was bigger than the book.”

Rappe-Flowers liked the writing because it was a “short, sweet story” about kindness. And it had a great presence of the natural world, where she likes to work best.

Painting in the tangerine-orange and sky-blue studio attached to her house in Bozeman, Rappe-Flowers slipped into a kid's-eye view of the world. Her favorite work of her life has been her art teacher residencies in elementary schools around Montana. There, she has learned that children look - really look - at nature.

Children will stop and look at a line of ants moving across a sidewalk. Adults, years beyond such wonder about the natural world, walk right past.

“How often do we do that?” she said. “We forget. It's not new anymore.

“They know how to really see. As adults, we forget how.”

In the story “An Open Heart,” Schieber and Moritz hike to Pyramid Pass in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in much the same way a child would. Retelling the story for readers in his own voice, Moritz, himself a 6-year-old, smells musty packhorses and the clean green of pine needles. He watches squirrels and chipmunks - but doesn't chase them - and feels the sun growing warmer as the day blooms.

Moritz takes a cooling dip in the creek, then shakes his coat off with a big spray. He enjoys the crunch of a cookie from Barry.

In her illustrations, Rappe-Flowers catches Moritz with a butterfly on his nose. She shows readers a marmot through Moritz's eyes.

“I think because the story is from a dog's perspective, kids will love it,” she said.

Children will be drawn in by Moritz's experience with Barry, too, she said: In this true story, Moritz gets in trouble, just as kids do with their parents. On the way down the mountain, Moritz finds a fawn. When Barry catches up, the fawn is lying in the trail, still. Barry is terrified that Moritz has hurt it.

Rappe-Flowers captures the moment in an illustration in which the mother deer looks on.

“The next thing is that Barry realizes the dog is really kind,” Rappe-Flowers said. “Kids are really kind, too, and they'll understand.”

Moritz wants Barry to understand his kindness toward the fawn, she said, just as a child would. Dogs have unconditional love for their human companions, and children feel the same way about their parents.

Rappe-Flowers paints one of her signature wooden bowls in her Bozeman studio. “I don't think about it when I'm painting. I don't think about cancer,” she says. “I think about shapes and sizes and colors.”

Rappe-Flowers thinks of herself more readily as a designer than an illustrator. She's known for her painted wooden bowls, which have their roots in work she did with her mother and stepfather Les when they owned and ran the Ninemile Schoolhouse.

“As an illustrator, I really struggle,” she said. “It was challenging. But it was good because I learned so much.”

She approached the work from her love of nature, which for her is spiritual, she said.

“You're out there, and it's so grand, and you're so insignificant,” she said. “It's part of where we live. We have to be connected.”

One of her favorite illustrations in the book is a doe in beargrass - deer are among her favorite animals and beargrass her favorite plants. The beargrass blooms' feathery presence in her mind took her to an alpine meadow on a sunny summer day.

“It's like a globe out there in the woods,” she said.

“I had the most fun with the deer,” she said. “Deer are magical.”

Drawing Moritz was not so easy. She loves dogs, but doesn't know Moritz well. A good artistic depiction comes from a rounded knowledge of the subject, she said. In her art teacher residencies, she has learned that the best drawings of an apple don't come from setting an apple on a table in front of young artists. Instead, she has children experience the apple in all its fullness.

“You've got to taste the apple, you've got to feel the apple, smell the apple,” she said. “You've got to employ all the senses.”

When Santa Fe, N.M., book designer Eleanor Caponigro got the illustrations and sat down to design the book, she found they stood remarkably well on their own.

“I found they were paintings in themselves,” she said in a phone interview from her Santa Fe home. “So I treated them that way.”

Throughout the book, Caponigro didn't put type on the paintings, but rather let them sing the story on their own pages.

“I think Barry and Hedvig, living in Montana, they had a certain sequence in their heads, both knowing the trail,” she said.

Caponigro, a designer of photography and art books for 30 years, knows how to draw the reader on. As the pages turn and the crescendo of the story builds, the sentences become fewer and the illustrations more numerous, words and pictures working together.

“I take both decks of cards and shuffle them and turn them into a book,” she said.

The reader sees and hears the story through both mediums.

“Communication is not always linear,” she said. “I don't have to be sitting across the table from you. It can come through different channels.”

Rappe-Flowers graduated from Frenchtown High School and earned her undergraduate degree in art with a minor in psychology at the University of Montana. She lived in Missoula for 30 years until her husband, Pat Flowers, took a new job with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Bozeman. Her daughters, Natalie and Ericka, are 15 and 16.

She looks forward to returning to Missoula for the new book's publication party on Dec. 8. She and Schieber - with Moritz - will sign “An Open Heart” at the Art Attic on South Avenue West from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

That night, her friends will bring forward their own acts of kindness.

As advance publicity for the book began to generate attention this fall, Schieber had an idea: Let's frame the illustrations, he told Hedvig, and have the publication party in an art gallery.

It was too much, Rappe-Flowers said. She didn't have the energy or the money, burdened by medical bills, to see to the framing. But then, she hadn't mentioned the idea to Patty Kent.

Kent, a friend who lives in Missoula, is known for getting things done. She doesn't know Schieber, but she called him. Surely we can make this happen, she said.

“When Patty Kent called me, she just pushed me through the door,” Schieber said. “She said, ‘Let me get to the point. We want you to fund it.' ”

Other people were drawn in. Schieber called Art Attic owner Janelle Woodworth. She found companies she works with to donate frames, molding and matting. She and her employees are donating their labor. Youpa Stein, co-director of Living Art and an old friend of Hedvig's from the days that Rappe-Flowers curated art shows of Living Art participants working through cancer with the arts, helped get the word out. At the signing, the illustrations will be for sale. The money will go to Hedvig and Pat to help with medical bills.

“I just thought that would be a fabulous thing to do,” Woodworth said. “And it just came together. I really think it's going to be a very, very wonderful time, a magical evening.”

Schieber also had greeting cards made of two of the illustrations, which will sell in boxes of 12.

People are already calling to ask about the framed illustrations.

“Moritz attracts people, Barry starts talking and things just happen,” Schieber said. “Moritz has a large following. And Hedvig and Hedvig's family are known for their good work.”

Rappe-Flowers has always been “amazing,” said Stein of Living Art.

“Being around her, it's like being next to a stream or a tree or a mountain,” she said. “She's so natural. Her ego doesn't get in the way. It makes complete sense that her artwork would reflect her relationship with the natural world.”

It's hard to find people who have not been touched by cancer in some way, Stein said. Woodworth of the Art Attic is on the board of Living Art. Her brother is a longtime survivor of cancer.

“Her heart is very open, and she's a very caring person,” Stein said. “She understands through her own family how cancer impacts people's lives. She wanted to do something for Hedvig.”

The Living Art board agreed to support the event with their nonprofit status, so the art sales will be tax-deductible to the purchasers as a benefit to Rappe-Flowers.

“People know Hedvig, and they're going to want to support her,” Stein said. “Hedvig has no idea, really. She has so many people here who would like to do something for her. She has a whole community here.”

Rappe-Flowers doesn't know how to express her thanks. She hopes she has more time to try. Recently, she decided, with Pat, to stop chemotherapy. It wasn't working, she said. And it made her feel terrible, far from the athletic outdoorswoman she is.

“I don't want to be chemo-ed to death,” she said. “And I want to feel good.”

“It was hard,” she said. “It means I'm not going to be around much longer. But nobody knows. It could be two weeks, two months, two years.

“It's a weird place to be. It's like running a marathon race, but not knowing when it's going to start.”

Rappe-Flowers plans to begin a new art project, a multimedia work about cancer that will use her own x-rays, bone scans, pill bottles and other medical paraphernalia. She doesn't want to go on a cruise or “the trip of a lifetime.” She's content where she is. She's happiest when she's painting, wearing her painter's apron layered with 10 years of colors. She leaves illness at the studio door.

“I don't think about it when I'm painting,” she said. “I don't think about cancer. I think about shapes and sizes and colors.”

Schieber keeps contemplating the coincidences. Retired from a career as an investment adviser and a former dean of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, Calif., he met Moritz as a puppy when he was in Switzerland for his own cancer treatment. He had never had a dog before, and wasn't thinking of getting one.

Today, he has a list of book signings around western Montana. Most of them just came to him. Two British dog magazines have called to do feature stories, unsolicited.

“These things are in place,” he said. “All I have to do is open the door. I have nothing to do with it.”

He couldn't have imagined the kindnesses would go so far, he said.

“I really think the book itself is a minor character in the story,” he said. “The whole thing doesn't have any boundaries. It just keeps going.”

Ginny Merriam is a Missoula free-lance writer, communications director for the city of Missoula, and a former Missoulian reporter.

Reach photographer Kurt Wilson at 523-5270 or at kwilson@missoulian.com.