ANDRE DUBUS III and JOSHUA BODWELL
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9 AT 2:00 PM

The Graves Library is thrilled to welcome back New York Times bestselling author Andre Dubus III on Sunday, December 9 at 2:00 pm to present Gone So Long, his first novel in more than a decade. 
Dubus III will appear in conversation with Joshua Bodwell, executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and editor of a new three volume series of the collected short stories and novellas of Dubus III’s revered father, Andre Dubus. The pair will discuss Dubus III’s new novel as well as the influence and vitality of his father’s fiction.
In Gone So Long, 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. (from publisher W.W. Norton)
Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Strout calls Gone So Long “an astonishment” and writes “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 III’s father, Andre Dubus (1936–1999), is one of the most revered American short story writers of his generation. Dubus’s work earned him, among others, the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and nominations for a National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize.
This year, Dubus’s longtime publisher, Boston-based David R. Godine, re-launched Dubus’s work in a three-volume series edited by former Graves Library board president Joshua Bodwell. The new volumes—We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The Winter Father, The Cross Country Runner—include introductions by literary legends Ann Beattie, Richard Russo, and Tobias Wolff, respectively. The Paris Review says the three new volumes “reaffirm Dubus’s status as a master, as an unparalleled excavator of the heart and its pains, its longings, its errors, its thumping against the constant threat of grief, despair, and loneliness.”
TICKETS
Tickets ($20.00) will be sold at Graves Library starting November 1st.  Price includes the talk, a wine and cheese reception, and intimate discussion with the author.  All proceeds benefit the Capital Campaign for the new Mothers Wing.  Limited seating available. Graves Library is located at 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport, Maine.  Please call  (207) 967-2778 for information on this event or other upcoming programs.  Copies of all books will be available for sale and signing.
Tickets: http://www.graveslibrary.org.