Cathartic, 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 angry enough to kill him. A profound exploration of the
struggle between the selves we wish to be, and the ones--shaped by
chance and circumstance, as well as character--that we can't escape, it
confirms Andre Dubus's reputation as a novelist whose "compassion is
unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering" (Paul Harding).