PRE-ORDER BOY FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY
New York Times: 25 Books Coming in September. Oprah’s Best Books of the Fall. Newsweek Fall Books Preview. Washington Post 6 Noteworthy Books for September. Kirkus Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025. Jewish Book Council Bookshelf, Fall 2025. Zibby’s Book of the Month. Publisher’s Lunch Buzz Books of the Fall. Brett Benner’s ‘Love’ List. AARP Big Fall 2025 Book Preview. Boston Globe notable books. Chicago Tribune Books for Fall 2025.
PROFILES
New York Times, A Novelist Asks: Am I Bob Dylan's Son?
Sussman was sitting in an armchair one recent afternoon in the same Upper East Side apartment where his mother lived and where her affair with Dylan began. He will talk for three hours, in his comfy, under-decorated apartment stuffed with books (Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf), his own somewhat primitive paintings and a collection of vinyl records (Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen). He’s earnest in a way that seems lifted from an age before irony.
The Independent: Sussman’s “prose in the novel has a journalistic precision, elevated by the grace of his language and the depth of his connection to the parent who raised him.”
Publisher’s Weekly, Writers to Watch: “Literature was a love language between my mother and me,” Sussman says, recounting how he grew up without TV in Goshen, N.Y., and read Harry Potter novels with his mother.
The Woodstock Overlook, Bob Dylan Might Be His Father. His Mother Is the Story. “Literature is the creation of meaning and significance out of the symbols and motifs of our lives,” Sussman told me.
REVIEWS
Oprah’s #6 Best Book of the Fall: “A rare combination of boldface intrigue and profound emotion.”
Kirkus, starred review: “Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory…”
Library Journal: “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.”
Publisher’s Weekly, starred review: "A man convinced he could be Bob Dylan’s son returns home to care for his ailing mother in Sussman’s gorgeous autobiographical debut. At the novel’s heart, though, is Sussman’s intense portrait of a mother and son’s emotional bond. It’s a stunner.”
Booklist, starred review: “Sussman writes with lyrical passion…and tenderness about the angst of creativity, the burden of fame, and, most extraordinarily and cathartically, a son’s evolving understanding of his mother’s love and sacrifice.”
Washington Post, 6 Noteworthy Books for September, “More vitally, though, he listens as she shares the story of her life, allowing him to appreciate the complexity of who she is and the choices she made. The truth underlying the characters’ stories brings power to this tender tribute to love between a mother and her son.”
AARP Big Fall 2025 Book Preview, “Evan may never know if he’s really the musician’s son, but it’s clear from this lovely novel that the question grows increasingly irrelevant as he grapples with the inevitable loss of his beloved mother.”
The Forward, “Sam Sussman’s novel is about his Jewish mom and the teasing possibility that Bob Dylan is his dad.”
Debutiful, Most Anticipated Debut Novels of 2025: “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.”
NEWS
Grove Press UK to publish Bob Dylan inspired autofictional novel: “I picked up Boy from the North Country as a Bob Dylan obsessive, but I put it down a Sam Sussman superfan – I’ve never encountered such a tender, inspiring relationship between mother and son.”
New novel featuring Bob Dylan, Boy from the North Country, given September release date
