An old shoe factory in a costal New England town is up for sale again. When a private equity mogul with a fondness for the factory’s shoes buys it, he sets in motion a story with profound implications for the way we live today. The people of Bealport depend on Norumbega. Their livelihoods, their self-respect and their interconnectedness are all at stake. The shadow of the factory’s fate looms over the people of the town. Idiosyncratic and humane, the cast is the kind that small communities under threat produce. Bealport is a portrait of a place, at once sympathetic, mordant, unsparing, comic, tragic and universal, and of a way of life that is passing. It is a novel of a town, and to no small degree of every town in America and beyond.

Dear Leonard Cohen,Could I ask you something, just between us? How was it that you never changed your name? You could have been Lawrence Cole. You could have been Lindsay Kohl, or Lionel Cone...So begins the story of an everyman Leonard Cohen, a would-be artist, a would-be lover, a would-be tragic figure, yet a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in particular, to write one song as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen's songs.At the center of Leonard's life is Daphne. In their meeting on a Greek island, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out. But even with her, Leonard is shadowed by the "other" Leonard Cohen. The ancient myth haunts the fated lovers of this novel, in which art, love, and fame all fatefully intertwine.

An old shoe factory in a costal New England town is up for sale again. When a private equity mogul with a fondness for the factory’s shoes buys it, he sets in motion a story with profound implications for the way we live today. The people of Bealport depend on Norumbega. Their livelihoods, their self-respect and their interconnectedness are all at stake. The shadow of the factory’s fate looms over the people of the town. Idiosyncratic and humane, the cast is the kind that small communities under threat produce. Bealport is a portrait of a place, at once sympathetic, mordant, unsparing, comic, tragic and universal, and of a way of life that is passing. It is a novel of a town, and to no small degree of every town in America and beyond.

Dear Leonard Cohen,Could I ask you something, just between us? How was it that you never changed your name? You could have been Lawrence Cole. You could have been Lindsay Kohl, or Lionel Cone...So begins the story of an everyman Leonard Cohen, a would-be artist, a would-be lover, a would-be tragic figure, yet a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in particular, to write one song as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen's songs.At the center of Leonard's life is Daphne. In their meeting on a Greek island, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out. But even with her, Leonard is shadowed by the "other" Leonard Cohen. The ancient myth haunts the fated lovers of this novel, in which art, love, and fame all fatefully intertwine.