Andre Dubus III

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning writer ANDRE DUBUS III—author of House of Sand and Fog and Townie, among others—for a discussion of his much-anticipated latest novel, Gone So Long. He will be joined in conversation by award-winning writer ALEXANDRIA MARZANO-LESNEVICH, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, and WBUR's ANTHONY BROOKS. 

About Gone So Long

Few writers can enter their characters so completely or evoke their lives as viscerally as Andre Dubus III. In this deeply compelling new novel, a father, estranged for the worst of reasons, is driven to seek out the daughter he has not seen in decades.

Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his arms by police. Now in her forties, Susan still suffers from the trauma of a night she doesn’t remember, as she struggles to feel settled, to love a man and create something that lasts. Lois, her maternal grandmother who raised her, tries to find peace in her antique shop in a quaint Florida town but cannot escape her own anger, bitterness, and fear.

Cathartic, affirming, and steeped in the empathy and precise observations of character for which Dubus is celebrated, Gone So Long explores how the wounds of the past afflict the people we become, and probes the limits of recovery and absolution.

Praise

“Gone So Long is an astonishment. I love this book so much, the humanity in it. I love every single person in it, they are so real, these people―I know them and love them all. I wept for them, I did. Dubus is just so good and real and true, he doesn’t pull one sentimental punch the whole time―extraordinary. I thought about those people as I was walking down the sidewalk, and they are inside me as well, not just thoughts that go by. I love this book to pieces.” —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge

“I tore through this haunting novel about people driven by pain beyond the reach of love and forgiveness, and the roads they use as they seek their way back. It hits just the right note at the end, and I’ll be thinking about Susan a long time. A hell of a read.” —Phil Klay, National Book Award–winning author of Redeployment

“Well, he’s done it again, hasn't he? What a gorgeous heartbreaker of a book. Dubus’s compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering. That and sheer artistry makes Gone So Long dark and radiant, beautiful and never to be forgotten.” —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers