The Cross Country Runner, Andre Dubus
The Cross Country Runner, Andre Dubus
List: $24.95 | Sale: $17.47
Club: $12.47

The Cross Country Runner
Collected Short Stories and Novellas, Volume 3

Author: Andre Dubus, Tobias Wolff

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot, Robert Fass, Joe Barrett, Cassandra Campbell, Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 17 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2018


Synopsis

The Cross Country Runner brings together Voices from the Moon, his longest, most masterful novella, and The Last Worthless Evening, Andre Dubus’ fifth collection of short stories and novellas, along with previously uncollected stories and a new introduction by PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Tobias Wolff.“‘It’s divorce that did it,’ his father had said last night.” So begins Voices from the Moon, the 126-page novella that shows Dubus at the height of his empathetic powers. Alternating between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family, the story takes place over the course of a single day.The four novellas and two stories of The Last Worthless Evening range further than those of any previous Dubus collection—racial tension in the navy, a detective-story homage, a Hispanic shortstop, the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet.This third volume in the series also draws together for the first time many of Dubus’ previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here in book form for the first time is “The Cross Country Runner,” which was originally published in the long-defunct Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was thirty years old and only recently graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The final story—the Western-themed “Sisters”—is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at just sixty-three years old.

About Andre Dubus

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered among the most talented American short-story writers of his generation. Born and raised in Louisiana, he spent his adult life living and teaching in blue-collar mill towns in northern New England. Dubus’ short stories and essays appeared in distinguished literary journals and magazines across the country, and were selected for numerous editions of the Best American Short Stories series, as well as the O. Henry Award and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Dubus’ work earned him MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and nominations for a National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize. In addition to seven collections of stories and novellas, Dubus published one novel and two collections of essays. The award-winning films In the Bedroom and We Don’t Live Here Anymore were adapted from his stories. Dubus is buried in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

About Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff is the author of several previous books and the editor of a growing list of anthologies. He has received numerous awards, among them the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story. He lives in Northern California and teaches English and creative writing at Stanford University.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

About Robert Fass

Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for the year’s best narration. He has earned many Earphones Awards and AudioFile magazine “Best of the Year” accolades.

About Joe Barrett

Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.

About Cassandra Campbell

Original bio sent from Cassandra: Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein’s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.  

About Hillary Huber

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim

Seven months ago in the midst of an arctic storm, the worst of the winter, it was my privilege to read "House of Sand and Fog," by Andre Dubus III. One of five children (born on 9/11 in 1959) it was customary in the fifties to give a first-born son the father's name. Thinking back, there were Big Ji......more

Goodreads review by Hannah

As usual, I was moved by Dubus's writing. I particularly enjoyed these later stories, and their deeper dives into the perspectives of women and even a few people of color. There's not much more I can say about Dubus, other than that I never come away from one of his stories without deep feeling.......more

Goodreads review by Brandon

Like clockwork, the stories go from terrible to glorious and you just have to keep going on. Good Read.......more


Quotes

“The three volumes reaffirm Dubus’s status as a master, as an unparalleled excavator of the heart and its pains, its longings, its errors, its thumping against the constant threat of grief, despair, and loneliness.” Paris Review

“Potent, searching stories…Dubus’ frank and inquisitive stories of conscience are incisively of their time and of ours.” Booklist (starred review)

“The volumes that underlie this collection represent Dubus at perhaps the apex of his career. The stories and novellas gathered here are often topical and even everyday; many of them speak to Dubus’ preoccupations, including racism and the military life…All of Dubus’ characters are searchers—and some find what it is they’re looking for, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. “A welcome gathering in a worthy project to bring Dubus’ work to a new generation of readers.” Kirkus Reviews