Boy from the North Country

A Novel

De: Sam Sussman

Narrado por: Sam Sussman

“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.

©2025 Sam Sussman (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“[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