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This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross, an accident that causes a severe injury and disability,

changes a life in an instant, and the chronic pain can last for the rest of your life.

So how do you carry on? That's the central question in the new novel by my guest,

Andre Debuse III. The main character, Tom, is a builder who falls off a roof,

breaking his pelvis and hips. Those bones are held together by pins, and long after the fall,

the fires around the pins are still raging. He's on disability, living in section 8,

subsidized housing, thinking he doesn't belong here, he doesn't belong with these people.

The psychic pain, spiritual void, and the anger and bitterness are constants.

Debuse had personal experiences he could draw from for the novel. His father, the writer Andre Debuse,

had his life changed while trying to do a good deed helping two people on the side of the road,

who had collided with an overturned motorcycle in the passing lane. While helping them,

he was hit by a car going over 55 miles an hour. One leg was amputated, and the other was virtually

paralyzed. He never walked again. Andre Debuse III grew up poor because his parents separated

long before his father's accident, leaving his mother sometimes unable to pay the rent or buying

a food to feed herself and for children in spite of the child support payments.

Andre Debuse III learned what it was like to have money after his novel House of Sound and Fog

became an opera book club selection, a bestseller, and was adapted into a film. He has a forthcoming

collection of essays called Ghost Dogs on Killers and Ken. His new novel is called Such Condoness.

Andre Debuse, welcome back to Fresh Air. Let's start with a very short reading from early in your

book on page 15. Okay. I have spent many hours contemplating pain. Its constant presence seems

...