André Dubus III's Ghost Dogs, On Killers and Kin essay is a memoir.
They were written between 1988 and 2023 and focus on family and work, guns, dogs, the COVID-19 pandemic, sudden success, falling in love, and life and the craft of writing .
But avid readers of Dubus will have the added pleasure of recognizing the people and places in these essays that were ultimately translated into his works of fiction.
Often, readers are also exposed to something unique about a real person that is not part of a fictional character.
Dubas, a Haverhill native who now lives in Newbury, will speak about his latest work at Jabberwocky Books in Newburyport on April 12, followed by the Newburyport Literary Festival from April 26 to 28, followed by 9 He will perform at the Danversport Yacht Club in Danvers on March 19th. and September 29th at Andover Bookstore. For more information on these and other presentations in the region, please visit www.andredubus.com.
Dabus's essay “Blood, Roots, Knitting, and Inside Out” features a woman with a $2 million trust fund. This woman appears to be the same as the ex-wife of disabled carpenter Tom Lowe, who appears in the 2023 novel Such Kindness.
She is mentioned once by her first name in several essays in Ghost Dogs, where her relationship with Dubas is doomed to fail, just like the one in the novel.
But in “Blood, Root, Knit, Purl”, in an unexpected touch, she teaches Davas to knit so he can make a handmade Christmas present for his aunt in Louisiana.
It's not clear who is more likely to do this: a rich woman who takes the time to knit scarves and sweaters, or a hard-working man who knits just about anything.
But practicing this humble, homely art makes their background less important and reduces the amount of love they share.
However, in some cases, the connection to Dubas's previous work does not convey much to the reader or does not prepare the reader for what will happen in the essay.
That also applies to “The Golden Zone,'' which recalls the character from his 2011 memoir “Tawney.'' He has a side job as a bounty hunter and takes Davas on a hunt for a brutal murderer in Mexico.
The plan is to turn the perpetrators over to authorities and bring them back to the United States to stand trial, but someone discovers Dubas and his partner first and breaks into their hotel room while they are out.
This is a fight that Dubas is willing to pass. However, he did not leave Mexico without regretting what he had done there in the name of gaining “experience.”
“I swore I would never go back here. I would never be the kind of person who consumes other people's misery as a tourist,” he wrote.
As Dabas writes several times in Ghost Dogs, both his father and mother were born in Louisiana, and to emphasize the words of the subtitle, most of his “relatives” are from Louisiana.
Despite Dubas' identification with the Merrimack Valley, “Ghost Dogs” reveals the importance of this southern element to his self-image.
Dubas explores this connection in detail in Puppy, about Dubas' maternal grandfather, Elmer Lamar Lowe, a former construction foreman in Fishville, Louisiana.
Dubas traveled to Louisiana with his mother and brother for the holidays, but there was little chance to relax as Pappy had Dubas and his brother Jeb cut down timber and cultivate garden beds.
Rather than resent these demands on his time, Dubas appreciated the value Pappy placed on hard work and the masculine example he provided.
As her son details in Tawney, this was a period when Dubus's father, the short story writer André Dubus, was largely absent.
Dubas identified so strongly with his grandfather that when his aunt asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied: I also want to be a working man like Pappy. ”
It wasn't until much later that a mature Dubas realized he wanted to write, and the story “The Last Dance,” included in his first book, The Cage Keeper, published in 1989, It's about my grandfather, and it's also dedicated to his memory.
It deals with an incident in which Dubas, his grandfather, and several men trap and slaughter a loggerhead sea turtle, which also appears in the essay about Puppy in “Ghost Dogs.''
In an essay in which Dubas is a mere observer, this incident appears as an example of Pappy's muscular resourcefulness.
But in the story, the main character Riley, clearly modeled after Dubas, is at the center of the action, wading through the water to catch a turtle with a hook at the end of a pole.
The physical challenges are matched by the emotional struggles Riley is having, which are recorded in the brutal final image.
But even as the work of fiction intensifies the incident, “Puppy” fits it into a larger pattern that doesn't become clear until the final paragraph of the essay.
At this point, Dubas reveals that he relies on the combination of his grandfather and father for everything he does.
“I feel the eyes of my grandfather, a worker and writer, on me, as well as my father,” Dabas writes.
