Meditations from a Movable Chair

The twenty-five luminous and intensely personal essays in this collection are, like Andre Dubus's celebrated short stories, a testament to the author's vulnerability, vision, and indestructible faith. Since losing one leg and the use of the other in a 1986 accident, Dubus has experienced despair, learned acceptance, and, finally, found joy in the sacramental magic of even the most quotidian tasks.
Whether he is writing of the relationship with his father, the rape of his beloved sister, his Catholic faith, the suicide of a gay naval officer, his admiration for fellow writers like Hemingway and Mailer, or the simple act of making sandwiches for his daughters' lunchboxes, Dubus cuts straight to the heart of things. Here we have a master at the height of his powers, an artist whose work "is suffused with grace, bathed in a kind of spiritual glow" (The New York Times Book Review).

"A rich account of the daily torments and triumphs of a human soul . . . [by] one of our most gifted writers." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Sublime . . . . To read these essays is to know what a blessing life can be, and how hard, on legs or on wheels." --St. Petersburg Times

"Dubus's prose is lathed to perfection. . . . [His] essays are every bit as dramatic, captivating, and full of mystery as his fiction." --The Boston Globe