Andre Dubus III's essays in his new collection "Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin" read like deeply imagined short stories.
Dubus explores his rough childhood raised by a single mother after his parents' divorce, his efforts to overcome his violent past, his relationships with women and the joys and challenges of fatherhood.
Reflecting upon his early attempts at writing and his growth into a man of peace and compassion, Dubus impressively displays fictional techniques. His captivating first-person narrative voice reveals him as a sensitive, perceptive observer. His encounters with a series of finely portrayed characters unfold in story-like plots.
Revisiting the territory of his excellent memoir "Townie," Dubus looks back on his childhood, when his financially strapped single mother frequently moved Dubus and his brothers and sisters from apartment to apartment, each cheaper than the last, in a losing battle to find affordable rents.
Bullied as a child when he entered new schools, Dubus as a teen began working out and learning how to fight, eventually beating up those who had tormented him. He laments that most of those with whom he fought are now dead.
Recognizing the self-destructiveness of his violent behavior, and developing tolerance for others as he goes to his desk each morning to learn to write, he understands that true masculinity is defined by caring for others.
A frequent presence is his father, the noted short story writer Andre Dubus II, who spent his last years in a wheelchair after a horrible accident. Attempting to help a motorist whose vehicle had broken down on an interstate highway, the elder Dubus was struck by a car, crushing both of his legs, one of which was amputated below the knee.
Dubus III pictures his father as optimistic and joyful despite his agonizing disability. In a memorable piece, Dubus describes the meeting of his father and the terminally ill Raymond Carver at an American Society of Arts and Letters awards ceremony. Having never previously met, but admiring each other's work, the two master short story writers immediately reach a deep friendship.
Although he grew up in small Massachusetts towns in industrial decline, Dubus has deep Louisiana roots. Both his mother and father grew up in a small Louisiana community, moving to New England after eloping.
Dubus III in traveling with his mother back to Louisiana finds a sense of home among her family. He casts his Massachusetts upbringing as one of exile, although he knows it formed him.
The acclaimed author of novels like "House of Sand and Fog"and "Such Kindness," Dubus in "Ghost Dogs" shows that he's a deep spiritual thinker as well as one of America's finest writers.