Andre Dubus

During childhood summers in Louisiana, Andre Dubus III’s grandfather taught him that men’s work is hard. As an adult, whether tracking down a drug lord in Mexico as a bounty hunter or grappling with privilege while living with a rich girlfriend in New York City, Dubus worked—at being a better worker and a better human being. In Ghost Dogs, Dubus’s non-fiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs and pain. In his longest essay, “If I Owned a Gun”, Dubus reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun, and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget. Drawing upon kindred literary spirits from Rilke to Rumi to Tim O’Brien, Ghost Dogs renders moments of personal revelation with emotional generosity and stylistic grace, ultimately standing as essential witness and testimony to the art of the essay.

Eric Hoffer Award Honorable Mention in Poetry Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Short List Medal Provocateur Finalist IPNE Book Awards Poetry WinnerTender the River captures in verse the history and legacy of the Merrimack River Valley, from the Pennacook, Wamesit, Algonquin, and other indigenous tribes who settled there first, to the European settlers who came with guns and their god to supplant them, to being the birthplace of America’s industrial revolution and first labor movements, to becoming a center of continued immigration, of entrenched nativism, and even multicultural celebration. The Merrimack River begins with the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers spilling from the White Mountains in New Hampshire, then travels down through mill towns like Manchester, Lowell, and Haverhill to finally spit out violently into the Atlantic in the old port (now posh) town of Newburyport. In its journey between those points and as well across the centuries, the Merrimack River Valley has been America in microcosm, many of the nation’s democratic successes and demagogic sins being seeded there.

Tom Lowe’s fall was catastrophic—a moment of fatigued inattention while shingling a roof leading to excruciating pain, opioid addiction, divorce and estrangement from his son. Yet Tom still considers himself a worker, unlike his shiftless neighbours in subsidised housing. And he resents the hell out of the banker and adjustable-rate mortgage responsible for foreclosure on the home he built himself. After his car is impounded, Tom stoops lower than he ever thought possible, with a scheme to commit fraud. But in digging through literal trash, Tom finds that something new begins to grow: a recognition of common humanity, a self-acceptance deeper than pride, a determination to give what he can. Still, he’ll need to fall even further before he finds a new place to rest. To one man’s painful moral journey, Andre Dubus III brings compassion with an edge of dark absurdity, forging a novel as absorbing as it is profound.

During childhood summers in Louisiana, Andre Dubus’s grandfather taught him that men’s work is hard. Ever after, whether tracking down a drug lord in Mexico as a bounty hunter or grappling with privilege while living with a rich girlfriend in New York City, Dubus worked—at being a better worker and a better human being. In his longest essay, “If I Owned a Gun”, he reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood; about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity; about the things writers remember and those they forget. In conversation with writers and thinkers from Rilke to Rumi to Tim O’Brien, Ghost Dogs renders moments of personal revelation with emotional generosity and stylistic grace, ultimately standing as essential witness and testimony to the art of nonfiction.

Tom Lowe’s fall was catastrophic—a moment of fatigued inattention while shingling a roof leading to excruciating pain, opioid addiction, divorce and estrangement from his son. Yet Tom still considers himself a worker, unlike his shiftless neighbours in subsidised housing. And he resents the hell out of the banker and adjustable-rate mortgage responsible for foreclosure on the home he built himself. After his car is impounded, Tom stoops lower than he ever thought possible, with a scheme to commit convenience-check fraud. But in digging through literal trash, Tom finds that something new begins to grow: a recognition of common humanity, a self-acceptance deeper than pride, a determination to give what he can. Still, he’ll need to fall even farther before he finds a new place to rest. To one man’s painful moral journey, Andre Dubus III brings compassion with an edge of dark absurdity, forging a novel as absorbing as it is profound.

A sensitive and penetrating reflection on coming of age in a Dutch immigrant family scarred by violence Arthur Boers's earliest memory was of shattered glass. His father threw a potted plant at his mother, and she ducked as the plant crashed through a window of the family home. His mother cleaned up the shards that day; later in life, he would find himself called upon to pick up the pieces as well. In Shattered, Boers reflects on coming of age in a family scarred by violence. The son of Dutch immigrants, Boers illuminates the generational trauma of the Nazi occupation of Holland, refracted in vignettes of his boyhood in postwar Canada. His hard-working, Calvinist family is endearing, but ultimately unable or unwilling to address the insidious cycle of abuse that passed father to son. Breaking with this silence and complicity, Boers reflects candidly and empathetically on his tumultuous relationship with his father. Intertwined with this narrative is his emerging vocation to ministry, more mystical and expressive than the Reformed tradition in which he was raised. Forthright and authentic, Boers extends a hand in solidarity to readers who have been wounded by those who were meant to protect them the most. With Shattered, he charts a path toward healing through faith.

Tender the River captures in verse the history and legacy of the Merrimack River Valley, from the Pennacook, Wamesit, Algonquin, and other indigenous tribes who settled there first, to the European settlers who came with guns and their god to supplant them, to being the birthplace of America’s industrial revolution and first labor movements, to becoming a center of continued immigration, of entrenched nativism, and even multicultural celebration. The Merrimack River begins with the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers spilling from the White Mountains in New Hampshire, then travels down through mill towns like Manchester, Lowell, and Haverhill to finally spit out violently into the Atlantic in the old port (now posh) town of Newburyport. In its journey between those points and as well across the centuries, the Merrimack River Valley has been America in microcosm, many of the nation’s democratic successes and demagogic sins being seeded there.

An ex- con who did time for murder, the estranged daughter he hasn’t seen in forty years and the grandmother angry enough to kill him all come together in this riveting family drama. Like Dubus’s already- classic memoir, Townie, and his novel House of Sand and Fog (a #1 The New York Times bestseller), Gone So Long is a profound exploration of the struggle between the selves we wish to be and the ones—shaped by chance and circumstance, as well as character—that we can’t escape.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone: Killings-the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom-is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love. Dubus' prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story Waiting: the hollow ache experienced by a woman widowed by the Korean War took Dubus fourteen months to write and was more than one hundred pages in early manuscript form but spans a mere seven pages in published form. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates called The Pretty Girl-the opening novella of The Times Are Never So Bad-the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction Dubus] has written. Richard Russo's introduction to this volume grapples with his complex feelings on reading Dubus' work over many decades, but when it comes to the much-anthologized masterpiece A Father's Story, Russo writes: I won't mince words. It's one of the finest stories ever penned by an American.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone: Killings-the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom-is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love. Dubus' prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story Waiting: the hollow ache experienced by a woman widowed by the Korean War took Dubus fourteen months to write and was more than one hundred pages in early manuscript form but spans a mere seven pages in published form. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates called The Pretty Girl-the opening novella of The Times Are Never So Bad-the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction Dubus] has written. Richard Russo's introduction to this volume grapples with his complex feelings on reading Dubus' work over many decades, but when it comes to the much-anthologized masterpiece A Father's Story, Russo writes: I won't mince words. It's one of the finest stories ever penned by an American.

In the early 1970s, literary journals that contained Andre Dubus' short stories were passed around among admiring readers. When his debut collection, Separate Flights, arrived in 1975, it was immediately celebrated and won the Boston Globe's Laurence L. & Thomas Winship / PEN New England Award. The collection includes the novella We Don't Live Here Anymore, which served as the basis for the 2004 film of the same title (nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival); the novella also introduces Dubus' writer-protagonist Hank Allison, a character who continues to appear throughout his work. Two years later, the title story of Dubus' sophomore collection Adultery and Other Choices continued the exploits of Hank Allison. The title story alone will make it worth your while to go out and get the book, wrote the New York Times Book Review. While the collection's opening stories focus on the fragile nature of youth, later stories shift to darker struggles of adulthood, such as in Andromache-Dubus' first story to appear in the New Yorker (1968)-which traces the aftermath of a tragic death during wartime.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone: Killings-the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom-is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love. Dubus' prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story Waiting: the hollow ache experienced by a woman widowed by the Korean War took Dubus fourteen months to write and was more than one hundred pages in early manuscript form but spans a mere seven pages in published form. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates called The Pretty Girl-the opening novella of The Times Are Never So Bad-the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction Dubus] has written. Richard Russo's introduction to this volume grapples with his complex feelings on reading Dubus' work over many decades, but when it comes to the much-anthologized masterpiece A Father's Story, Russo writes: I won't mince words. It's one of the finest stories ever penned by an American.

Spirituality, sex, violence, guilt, and morality in stories that are filled with a generosity and tenderness that distinguishes the masterful short fiction writer, Andre Dubus. This third volume in the Collected Short Stories and Novellas by Andre Dubus includes the four novellas and two stories collected in The Last Worthless Evening, the novella, Voices from the Moon, plus previously uncollected stories—all with an introduction by Tobias Wolff.“It’s divorce that did it,” his father had said last night. So begins Voices from the Moon, the 126-page novella that takes place over the course of a single day and alternates between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family. The stories from The Last Worthless Evening range further than in any previous Dubus collection: racial tension in the Navy; a detective story homage; a Hispanic shortstop; the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet. Finally, this volume includes previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here is “The Cross Country Runner”—first published in the Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was 30 years old. The final story—the western-themed “Sisters”—is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at the age of 63. Collected Short Stories and Novellas by Andre Dubus includes We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The Winter Father, and The Cross Country Runner. All three contain work by an American master, perfect for anyone who loves stories of the human heart and where it can lead us.

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.

A recent immigrant from the Middle East--a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force--yearns to restore his family's dignity in California. A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold onto the one thing she has left?her home. And her lover, a married cop, is driven to extremes to win her love. Andre Dubus III's unforgettable characters--people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on--careen toward inevitable conflict. Their tragedy paints a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.

“Andre Dubus, one of the 20th century’s most gifted short story writers.”—The New York TimesWhen Andre Dubus’s first book of stories, Separate Flights arrived in 1975, it was immediately celebrated as the arrival of a new and important voice in American fiction. Two years later came Adultery and Other Choices and Dubus’ reputation rose even higher. Both books are now collected in We Don’t Live Here Anymore, the first in the three-volume Collected Short Stories and Novellas by Andre Dubus. “The stories are about how people must make accommodations once they find out there’s no winning,” Ann Beattie writes in her introduction. While the collection’s opening stories focus on the fragile nature of youth, later stories shift to darker struggles of adulthood, such as in “Andromache”—Dubus’s first story to appear in The New Yorker—which traces the aftermath of a tragic death during wartime. Collected Short Stories and Novellas by Andre Dubus includes We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The Winter Father, and The Cross Country Runner. All three contain work by an American master, perfect for anyone who loves stories of the human heart and where it can lead us.

Exquisitely powerful short stories by the masterful Andre Dubus. Originally published in two volumes, The Times Are Never So Bad and Finding a Girl in America. This collection includes some of Andre Dubus’s most celebrated stories including “A Father’s Story,” “The Pretty Girl,” and “Killings”—the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film In the Bedroom—a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love. “Dubus’s stories feel as fresh today as they did when I first read them, three decades ago,” Richard Russo writes in the introduction. “One reason is the delight he takes in playing off readers’ genre expectations. Conventional robbery stories, for example, are almost always concerned with whether the thieves will get caught. Here [in ‘Anna’] it’s the exact opposite. Dubus doesn’t care whether Anna and Wayne get caught; not getting caught actually deepens their predicament. Similarly, ‘Townies,’ which at first appears to be the story of a murdered college girl, turns out to be about the unexpected link between the campus cop who finds her body and the boy who kills her, both of whom have been excluded from the privileged girl’s world by virtue of their class.” Collected Short Stories and Novellas by Andre Dubus includes We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The Winter Father, and The Cross Country Runner. All three contain work by an American master, perfect for anyone who loves stories of the human heart and where it can lead us.

In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"—tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty-five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she’s met surfing the Web. Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.

In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"—tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty-five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she’s met surfing the Web. Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.