Gone So Long is a riveting family drama about an ex-con who did time for murder, the estranged daughter he hasn't seen in forty years, and the grandmother angry enough to kill him. A profound exploration of the struggle between the selves we wish to be, and the ones--shaped by chance and circumstance, as well as character--that we can't escape, it confirms Andre Dubus's reputation as a novelist whose "compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering" (Paul Harding).