Sam Sussman (Boy From the North Country) in Conversation with James Lasdun

Boy from the North Country orbits a charged uncertainty: Evan, the narrator may be Bob Dylan’s son, but the book’s gravity is the mother who raised him. Rather than chase proof, the novel lingers at the bedside and in memory, turning a tabloid-ready mystery into a reckoning with love, loss, and storytelling itself. Sussman grew up in Goshen, and the Hudson Valley’s hush and fields haunt these pages, grounding a story that keeps its question mark while clarifying a life. The paternity rumor hums in the background (the curly haired Sussman is a dead ringer for a young Dylan) but the heart belongs to mama.