THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE

A mythic, propulsive novel about the tangled fates of a matriarchal crime family in Maine, and the first in a trilogy.

Your ancestors breathe through you. Sometimes, they call for vengeance. Babs Dionne, proud Franco-Canadian, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town of Waterville, Maine with an iron fist. She has vowed to never forget where she came from, nor the horrific acts inflicted upon her and lashed back out by her in turn. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants and her eldest daughter Lori, an Army vet struggling with addiction. When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. But Babs and her crew are distracted - her youngest daughter, Sis, is missing. In twenty-four hours, she will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs' wrath. This is a crime saga with a ferocious matriarch at its bruised, beating heart. A BRILLIANT, AWARD-WINNING LITERARY VOICE TURNS TO CRIME: Ron Currie has dazzled critics and readers alike with his gorgeous, genre-blurring, darkly funny fiction, earning comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving, and bringing home all manner of prizes, including the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE is his first foray into crime, a thriller unlike any you've read beforegorgeous, richly textured, propulsive, and funny. Currie immerses us in the little-known, fascinating, and still-living history of French Canadians in New England. This dark past of bigotry and violence echoes down through the centuries and drops into Currie's own hometown of Waterville, Maine. Currie has lived through this blinkered history, and Babs herself was inspired by his own grandmother. THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE is the first of three books set in Waterville, Maine, exploring the triumphs and tragedies of Babs and her kin. Ron Currie is the author of four novels. He has won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.