Dear Ann: A Novel Hardcover – September 8, 2020

Longlisted for the 2021PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionA Kirkus Best Book of the YearFrom the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love.AnnWorkman is smart but naïve, a misfit who’s traveled from rural Kentucky tograduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann ferventlyseeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for—a boyfriend. But notany boy. She wants the “Real Thing,” to be in love with someone who loves herequally.ThenJimmy appears, as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place,upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejectshis upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music andliterature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be aperfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country inturmoil, their future is uncertain.Manyyears later, Ann recalls this time of innocence—and her own obsession withJimmy—as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, shetries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all thoseyears ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor hadurged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caughtup in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own goodsense have saved her from disaster?Beautifullywritten and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of onewoman’s life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at oncethe excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of theroad not taken—the interplay of memory and imagination—can illuminate, andperhaps overtake, our present. Read more