In a column for The Globe and Mail, Sam Sussman argues that his autobiographical novel explores the complex experience of transferring real life into art.
New York writer Sam Sussman examines a son’s grief over the loss of his mother in his novel Boy from the North Country. His late mother, Fran Sussman, worked as a holistic practitioner and onetime actress. She had a relationship in 1974 with Bob Dylan, according to The Globe and Mail.
Biographers note that she may be referenced in the musician’s 1975 song Tangled Up in Blue with the lyric, “She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe.” The romance was brief, though the two had a brief romantic reunion in 1990. Sussman was born nine months after that reunion.
The author wrote his novel while living in two distinct locations that shape the narrative. These include the walk-up apartment on East 78th Street in Manhattan where his mother read poetry to Dylan, and a farm in upstate New York where he was raised. Sussman described the writing environment as a majestic experience.
“It really makes you feel the power of places,” Sussman told The Globe and Mail. “The way that they hold our memories, hold parts of ourselves.”
Fran Sussman died of cancer in 2017. In 2021, Sussman wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine raising the possibility that Dylan is his father. He does not know if the musician is his biological father and does not feel driven to find out.
“If anyone asks, I will say that I am my mother’s son,” Sussman said.
The author explained that the book connects different forms of artistic transformation. The narrative touches on his mother trying to understand what it means to take her own experiences and transform them into playing Hedda Gabler. It also reflects on Dylan trying to translate personal crisis into the album Blood on the Tracks.
“The character who I gave my middle name, Evan, is trying to understand what it means to take everything that had been painful and complex in his life and transform that into a book,” Sussman said.
Sussman said that a Dylan scholar tracked the author down on the street to gain access to the East 78th Street apartment.
“I get all the weird messages that you would imagine,” Sussman said. “But for me, that’s incidental.”
He added that the core of the project shifted over time away from youthful fixation. The emotional narrative moves toward an appreciation for the mother who raised him.
Fran Sussman was a holistic practitioner, a onetime actress, and the mother of author Sam Sussman. She had a relationship with Bob Dylan in 1974 and a brief romantic reunion in 1990.
Sussman published the autobiographical novel in 2025, and the book is now available in paperback.
Sussman said that he has not heard from Bob Dylan regarding the book.
Sussman discussed the book ahead of his appearance at Toronto’s Leah Posluns Theatre in conversation with Erica Ehm.
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