Townie A Memoir

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre DubusIII and his three siblings grew up with their overworkedmother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturatedwith drugs and everyday violence. Nearby, his father, aneminent author, taught on a college campus and took thekids out on Sundays. The clash between town and gown,between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of "townies"and the ambitions of students debating books and ideas,couldn'¬"t have been more stark. In this unforgettable memoir,acclaimed novelist Dubus shows us how he escaped the cycleof violence and found empathy in channeling the stories ofothers'¬ ;bridging, in the process, the rift between his fatherand himself.