Thursday Oct 01, 2026
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
About the Book.
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.
About the Author.
Sam Sussman is the author of the debut novel Boy From the North Country, published by Penguin Press in September 2025. The novel was reviewed by Kirkus as “the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory,” became an instant USA Today Bestseller, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction. Sam previously won the BAFTA New Writing Award and wrote the Harper’s memoir, “The Silent Type: On (Possibly) Being Bob Dylan’s Son.” He has received a Yaddo residency to work on his second novel. Originally from the Hudson Valley, Sam has lived in Jerusalem, Berlin, and England. He graduated with a B.A from Swarthmore and M.Phil from Oxford. Sam has taught writing and literature seminars in the U.K, India, and Chile, spoken at Columbia, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, Cornell College, and U.C. Berkeley, and participated in the Miami Book Fair, Brattleboro Literary Festival, and the PEN American World Voices Festival. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley