Boy from the North Country

Boy from the North Country
by Sam Sussman
336 pages, Penguin Press (2025)

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• Bookshop.org (affiliate — supports this site)

This title arrived on my doorstep in a nice tidy yellow box, part of my Nu Reads subscription. It’s sort of touted as a Bob Dylan paternity mystery. Eh, whatever. The book earns its keep on entirely different ground.

Sussman hooked me, by really nailing one difficult detail of any writing: the experience of being the adult child in the room.

It’s found in the way a parent manages what details she discloses. The careful editing of what the doctor said. The performance of “I’m handling it” aimed directly at the one person who loves them most. If you have ever driven someone to a cancer treatment, bracing against every bump in the road, sat with your own thoughts (and some knitting or a book untouched in your lap) in a waiting room while someone you love is on the other side of a door, and then spent the careful ride home receiving whichever version of the truth they decided you could handle — this book will feel very familiar. Not comfortably familiar. Simply… accurate, as if taken from your life (or journal).

It’s an accessible read. “Easy” isn’t quite the word I’d use even years after experiencing a parent dying of cancer, but the storytelling pulls you through. There’s no doubt from the start as to how at least part of the book will end. The NYC scenes add some color along with other threads of adult children navigating parent caregiving that are worth following.

Overall, this is a quiet novel telling the strained story of a son attempting to know his mother before he can’t ask more questions, and about how much we don’t say even when we’re trying to say everything. And what’s lost in those omissions.

I recommend reading it with a caveat that you will need a few minutes after certain chapters and scenes.