Andre Dubus III explores the days before Sept. 11 in new novel

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Best-selling novelist Andre Dubus III says his new book, set in a strip club in the days before the Sept. 11 attacks, was inspired by an image of a pile of cash on a bedroom bureau.

St. Paul, Minn. — In the new novel "The Garden of Last Days" by Andre Dubus III, a little girl wakes up in the office of the strip club where her mother is dancing. She wanders away.

Her disappearance changes the lives of several of the people at the club: her mom, the bouncers and the customers, including a Middle Eastern man who is about to leave Florida on a suicide mission. It's early September 2001.

Dubus wrote the best selling novel "The House of Sand and Fog." He's in the Twin Cities to read from his new novel. He says he didn't set out to write a Sept. 11 novel, but kept returning to a single image of the money on the desk.

Broadcast Dates

• All Things Considered, 06/08/2009, 4:50 p.m.