Boy from the North Country

A man convinced he could be Bob Dylan’s son returns home to care for his ailing mother in Sussman’s gorgeous autobiographical debut. Evan Klausner, a 26-year-old aspiring writer, is devastated when his strong-willed mother, June, announces she has ovarian cancer, and he returns home to the Hudson Valley from London to take care of her. Over the course of the novel, he becomes fascinated by the stories she tells him while she recovers from chemotherapy, about her bohemian life in the Manhattan art world of the 1970s as a painter, actor, and lover and muse to Dylan, whom she last saw less than a year before Evan was born. When Evan asks if Dylan is his father, June is coy, and his imagination races. By the time Evan learns of June’s terminal prognosis, she only has weeks remaining. In poetic narration interwoven with Dylan’s lyrics, Evan expresses how the musician’s songs inspired him to lead a wandering and creative life. “Possibility coursed through me,” he remembers of being a teenager and hearing Dylan singing “I want you, I want you so bad” on a CD in his bedroom. At the novel’s heart, though, is Sussman’s intense portrait of a mother and son’s emotional bond. It’s a stunner. Agents: Peter Steinberg and Yona Levin, UTA. (Sept.)