Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. His novels include A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; and the newly released Moonlight Mile.Mystic River was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and it won both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel as well as the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lehane worked as a counselor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston, Massachusetts, area.
One title from his list of five favorite short story collections, as told to The Daily Beast:
Read about another collection on Lehane's list.Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
As big-hearted and passionate as Carver’s stories are clinical and detached, Andre Dubus was one of the last great traditionalists in American short fiction. He packed entire novels into 20 or 25 pages. His stories were often epic journeys about working class people caught in moments of extremis. We meet, among others, a father trying to avenge the death of his son, an overweight woman on a lifelong trek to find authentic love, and a deeply religious man who covers up an awful crime. Dubus handled every story he wrote with wit and muscle and endless compassion. When he passed on in 1998, anyone who’d ever read him knew he was irreplaceable.
Read about Dennis Lehane's five most important books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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