Boy from the North Country

A Novel

De: Sam Sussman

Narrado por: Sam Sussman

“This portrait of a young man caring for his mother is a rare combination of boldface intrigue and profound emotion.” —Oprah Daily, The Best Fall Books of 2025

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

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.

A story brimming with intense love and raw openness

So well written!!! I felt the emotion so deeply that was shared openly between a young man and his mother. Their rare relationship was so eloquently portrayed. I was riveted from the first line to the last, this is a must read.

A true love story

A true love story between a mother and son. In the end it only mattered who was there.

profound and beautiful

I love everything about this book. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the writer and his mother.

Son mother love

Moving, deep, caring story of a son and his mother. Dylan is appropriately an incidental character

This is a Treasured gift on Understanding What is means to Choose Love

Sam Sussman is an incredible orator, with an incredible knowledge base of literature and the arts. His story wrestles in a poetic journey to understand the human condition. Evan’s journey with his mother could be a templet on how we can hope to journey with a love for our parents. Thank you for opening your heart to us, to bring such a soulful presentation.

Ver Relatable Touching Story

I lost my mother just under two months ago. I'm a single mother of a 25 year old son. This story hit too close to home. Really enjoyed the read.

Beautiful writing

Loved it all and the author’s performance was excellent and beautiful. The book was fabulous.

So many levels of terrable!! Poorly structured. Poorly written, SO MUCH REPETITION!!!

The incessant self-flagellation in the story got old very quickly, but on it continued.

Every thought and spoken word are delivered as if they are supremely profound. This is especially true listening to the audio book as read by the author. Annoying!! His mother‘s voice is delivered in whispered tones as if her thoughts are so special that you should lean in and listen carefully.

An exhausting extraction of every quilty thought of his actions toward her mother’s love interests stated over and over again throughout the book without ever changing in its delivery, just pure repetition.

No thought toward an economy of words instead, using sentences like.. I got in my car and turned on the ignition and drove to the hospital. Really, we need to know you turned on the ignition? Did you forget to tell us you opened the door and sat down in the drivers seat first? There are many examples of this type of writing.

There are long sub-stories that don’t move the main one forward. Maybe they contain interesting thoughts, but they don’t fit in this book. Sam, save them for some other book.

This would be a great book for students to practice making editing suggestions. It’s ripe with possibilities for drastic improvement.

This book was bought by me for the same reason it will be bought by others. The promise of another Bob Dylan touchstone, another sliver of his life. But it gets old very quickly as you hear every conceivable thought process and every desire in every stage of life to discover if he was the love child of Bob Dylan. And so many of those thought processes repeated incessantly with out new insight throughout the book. So much so that it reads like a most desperate plea for a future response from Bob himself.

Note to Sussman… get an editor for your next book. You will learn a lot.

Conclusion: if you are intreagued by possibly new details of Bob Dylan’s life, read a review of the book and be done with it. You will get those highlights. Yes, it sounds like Sussmans mother had an affair with Dylan. Yes he’s possibly his child. But don’t wait for confirmation as Sussmans mother never does definitely reveal who his father is.