A NEW York writer who believes he may be the illegitimate son of a legendary musician has released a novel based on his mother’s secret tryst with him.
Sam Sussman, 34, says his late mum Fran had a year-long fling with Bob Dylan in the mid-1970s in his tell-all book.
Sam Sussman, thirty-four, released a novel about his mother’s alleged affair with Bob Dylan[/caption]
His book, Boy from the North Country, details a year-long fling in the mid-nineteen seventies[/caption]
Sussman’s mother, Fran, allegedly reconnected with Dylan briefly before Sussman’s birth[/caption]
He also claims they had a brief reunion in the early 1990s – less than a year before his birth.
Sussman’s book, titled Boy from the North Country, tells the story of that relationship and the lingering question of whether Dylan is his father.
The claim surfaced when Sussman was only 15.
Driving with his stepfather, Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” played on the radio.
Stepdad Luke turned and told him: “There’s a lyric in there about your mother.
“They used to know each other in her early New York days.”
Sussman, who boasts the same wilater learned Fran – renamed June in the novel – met Dylan in a Manhattan painting class.
According to the author, she was the only student bold enough to critique his work, telling him his shades of blue were “so remote from one another it was hard to feel any intimacy.”
The pair grew close, with Dylan showing up at her Yorkville apartment at all hours, Sussman writes in his novel.
They smoked, read poetry and shared nights together, some of which Sussman believes were written into Dylan’s songs.
He told the New York Post: “He was completely taken by [the poetry].
“Then at a certain point he played her ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ and he sang that lyric to [Fran].
“That’s her most definitive appearance in his lyrics.”
In the book, June also recalled Dylan whispering a line from his own song, “Boots of Spanish Leather”: “June, if I had the stars from the darkest night I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss.”
According to Sussman’s book, the romance ended abruptly when Dylan played her a new song clearly written for his wife, Sara.
Fran cut ties — but Sussman says the two reconnected briefly in the early 1990s, around nine months before he was born.
Sussman said his mum met Dylan in a Manhattan painting class[/caption]
Bob Dylan pictured in 1966 in London[/caption]
Sussman reading passages from his book, ‘Boy from the North Country’[/caption]
At the time, Fran was married to the man Sussman knew as his father.
The couple divorced when he was two.
Raised in Goshen, New York, Sussman says he always felt parallels with Dylan’s life.
“I was this young Jewish kid growing up in a rural part of America, longing to go where there was a larger culture,” he explained.
But confirmation never came.
Fran, who died of cancer in 2017 at 63, refused to say whether Dylan was his father – and may not have known herself.
“[Dylan] wasn’t part of our lives,” Sussman said.
“I am her son. That’s the center of my relationship to myself. And that’s enough.”
Still, he admits Bob Dylan remains tied to his story, saying: “My determination to know more about him led me much closer to her.”
When asked if he thinks the music icon is his father, he replied: “I’m my mother’s son. That’s where the story ends.”
Bob Dylan pictured performing on stage in London, 2019[/caption]
Dylan at the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles, 2011[/caption]
