Boy from the North Country - by Sam Sussman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Sussman's searingly tender debut novel... will be required reading for Dylanologists eager to see yet another side of their idol, but the heart of the story is the ferocious bond between a mother and son." --Library Journal

A son returns home to his dying mother to discover the astonishing truth of his origins and the secrets of a woman whose life and wisdom he is only beginning to understand

When Evan, twenty-six, is suddenly called home from his life abroad to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised by his mother, June, there is so much he does not yet know. He doesn't know his mother is dying. He still doesn't know the identity of his biological father or the elusive story of his mother's creatively intense, emotionally turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whom Evan reveres as an artist and whom strangers have long insisted he resembles. He doesn't know the secrets of his mother's life before he was born or what drove her to leave New York City for a completely different existence.

In this deeply moving debut novel, Sam Sussman writes one of the most tender and intimate mother-son relationships of our era. Caring for his mother as her illness worsens, and as she begins to tell him truths he has waited so long to hear, Evan comes to understand the startling gift this extraordinary woman has bequeathed him.

Inspired by the author's own uncertain celebrity paternity, Boy from the North Country is an emotionally searing meditation on the most essential human themes: loss, healing, memory, and the redemptive power of love.

Review Quotes

"[Sussman] magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel . . . The love that swells beneath this scene, and every scene, will just about knock you over . . . Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Sussman's searingly tender debut novel . . . will be required reading for Dylanologists eager to see yet another side of their idol, but the heart of the story is the ferocious bond between a mother and son." --Library Journal

"It will be easy to pitch this book as a 'Bob Dylan novel' - and it is that, but it's so much more. It's an intimate and stirring novel about a boy's relationship with his parents, filled with heart. Sussman asks, Does it matter if biological parents who haven't been around matter? And, if they do matter, how does one confront the desire to bring them into their life as an adult?" --Debutiful

"Sam Sussman is a courageous, honest, compassionate, generous writer, and Boy from the North Country is a remarkable novel. It's a penetratingly observed exploration of loss and grief, healing and mortality, theology, philosophy, and above all, art--of art as origin and salvation, art as community, seduction, fame, power, holiness. Its language is unguardedly personal, at times uncomfortably intimate, accumulating over and over into moments of stunning poetic force, revelatory insight, heartbreak and wisdom." --Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America

"This novel has a haunting story to tell, and it tells it beautifully. It was a pleasure to read." --Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments

"A loving ode to an extraordinary mother; a soulful coming of age; an unlikely portrait of Dylan in his prime as fresh as they come. Sam Sussman's Boy from the North Country heralds the arrival of a blazing new literary talent." -- Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies and Disgraced

"Boy from the North Country is a debut novel of rare power, a page-turning story of a son learning to return to his mother's transformative love. Tragic and redemptive, poetic and provocative, this novel held me breathless at every turn. Sussman is a writer of many gifts." --Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Today Will Be Different

"Boy from the North Country reveals Bob Dylan at his most alive and inspired, as you have never seen him before. This book is a monumental event for anyone who cares about Dylan. More meaningfully, the book transforms into an emotionally moving story of what it means to love a mother and be a son. Sussman has written one of the Great Millennial Novels and proved himself an inheritor of Dylan's lyrical tradition." --David Yaffe, author of Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown

"A dazzling book that promises everything and delivers more. Boy from the North Country is a beautifully written, emotionally nuanced portrait of a woman in all her complexity and courage." --Aminatta Forna, author of The Devil That Danced on the Water

About the Author

Sam Sussman grew up in the Hudson Valley. He graduated with a BA from Swarthmore College and an MPhil from the University of Oxford and has lived in Berlin and Jerusalem. His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper's Magazine. Sam has taught writing seminars in India, Chile, and England and participated in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.