Twenty-three unforgettable short stories from one of America's most celebrated literary masters.John Updike once said of his friend and fellow writer Andre Dubus: "[He] is a shrewd student of people who come to accept pain as a fair price for pleasure, and to view right and wrong as a matter of degree." Dubus's characters are depicted in all their imperfection, but with the author's requisite tenderness and compassion. After all, they are just as human as we are, an...

"Taut with tension.… [E]nding with a hint of hope."—Rob Merrill, Associated PressCathartic, affirming, and steeped in the empathy and precise observations of character for which Dubus is celebrated, Gone So Long explores how the wounds of the past afflict the people we become.Gone So Long is a riveting family drama about an ex-con who did time for murder, the estranged daughter he hasn't seen in forty years, and the grandmother an...

Six interlinked stories from a #1 New York Times best-selling author, illuminating the fragile-yet-resilient ties that bind family, friends, and lovers.A master of American realism and of the short story, Andre Dubus III here explores what poet Ellen Bass calls “this visceral bloody union that is love, but beyond love.” Our Possible Life follows the stories of six characters, three women and three men, all of whom are trying to live up to what the...

This "haunting and subtle" collection of short stories offers a compassionate portrayal of man's journey from childhood to maturity ( Publishers Weekly).For the adolescents in Part One of Andre Dubus's Adultery & Other Choices, youth is characterized by humiliation, alienation, and disappointment: A son struggles to connect with his distant father, and later he must overcome a schoolyard bully. Then, for the soldiers that inhabit Part Two, service ...

From the acclaimed author of 'A Father's Story': A boy looks to the Catholic Church for understanding as his family weathers two failed marriages.Voices from the Moon opens amidst the fallout of Stowe family patriarch Greg's divorce from his wife, Joan; and shortly after, that of their eldest son, Larry, from his wife, Brenda. On the verge of adolescence, young Richie Stowe grapples to make sense of these events and their consequences, and seeks solace in t...

A tour de force collection from an American master of short fiction—"its emotional heartbeat is so insistently truthful" ( The New York Times).In his fifth collection of short fiction, Andre Dubus exhibits his remarkable storytelling range. In "Deaths at Sea," two naval officers, one black and one white, must come to terms with a history and an institution steeped in racism. "After the Game" tells the story of a Hispanic shortstop on a major-league baseball...

The third heartbreaking collection of short stories from the acclaimed master who is "here not to offer comfort but truth" ( The New Yorker).The ominous tone of this exquisite collection is established at its onset, as a bereaved father stalks the man who murdered his son. Three stories later, a college student suffers a violent death at the hands of her boyfriend. And in later episodes, relationships falter and fail, not all fatalities being of the flesh.

This first collection, from one of the most celebrated masters of the form, "restores faith in the survival of the short story" ( Los Angeles Times).For the men and women in Andre Dubus's poignant debut collection, life and love are not without their tribulations. The devout endeavor to reconcile the demands of their faith with their most basic human inclinations. A doctor is confronted with his limitations as a man. Husbands and wives seek solace in the be...

A classic collection that contains some of the author's "most compelling and suspenseful" work—including 'The Pretty Girl' and 'A Father's Story' (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review).In his fourth collection, Andre Dubus revisits his central themes of infidelity and fallibility, exploring the minds of his characters with unflinching honesty and unfailing compassion. Set in the New England landscape, and populated by the complex, damaged indiv...

The reflective essays of one of America's most accomplished authors.Andre Dubus is celebrated for depicting the subtlest of human emotions and finding compassion for the most damaged, and damaging, of characters. In the essays collected here, the author turns the microscope on himself, and the results are no less illuminating. Intimate and evocative, these autobiographical accounts of his childhood in Louisiana, his experiences in the Marine Corps, and, later, his l...

The Fall 2024 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the most innovative voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Fall 2024 Issue, edited by Ladette Randolph, features prose by Andre Dubus III, Gretchen E. Henderson, Benjamin H...

We Take Care of Our Own traces the evolution of Bruce Springsteen’s beliefs, beginning with his New Jersey childhood and ending with his most recent works from Springsteen on Broadway to Letter to You. The author follows the singer’s life, examining his albums and a variety of influences (both musical and nonmusical), especially his Catholic upbringing and his family life, to show how he became an outspoken icon for working-class America—indeed for working-class ...