Down but not out in a new novel by Andre Dubus III

Jun. 20—If the new novel by Andre Dubus lll was a book from the Bible, it would be Job.

Like the central figure in that story, who famously endured many hardships, the main character of Dubus' "Such Kindness" has no end of trouble.

He is a carpenter, Tom Lowe, Jr., who has been disabled since falling off a roof 10 years ago. Tom now lives in subsidized housing in Amesbury, and most of what he eats comes from a food pantry.

Tom became addicted to painkillers following surgery, and managed to break that dependence, but not before destroying his relationships with his wife and son.

The screws that hold Tom's hips together are still a source of chronic pain, but he deals with that now by drinking vodka, which he calls his "pain distracter."

"I've spent many hours contemplating pain," Tom says. "Its constant presence seems like such a dark joke, really. Like the school bully who sits on your chest and spits in your face years after both of you have moved on."

These bitter realities are in place as the novel opens, when Tom is trying to figure out how to pay some fines so he can get his car back and visit his son on his twentieth birthday.

Unable to work, he tries to raise money by assisting in one criminal enterprise, before being victimized by another.

At this point, Tom's problems are only just beginning.

"I threw every bad thing possible at Tom Lowe," Dubus said. "I was projecting my own fatherhood feelings about not being able to provide for my sons or daughter."

"Such Kindness" was published Tuesday, and Haverhill native Dubus will give a reading from the new work on Monday, June 26 at the Bookshop at Beverly Farms. He also has upcoming appearances in Brookline, Boston, Portsmouth and elsewhere in the region.

There are many similarities between Dubus and Tom, in addition to the fact that they have spent their lives in Cape Ann, the Merrimack Valley and the North Shore, where most of the novel is set.

As documented in his 2011 memoir, "Townie," Dubus also spent many years working as a carpenter with his brother, Jeb, who was a union member at age 19.

"I did a lot of kitchens and bathrooms and then, right around the first or second year of my marriage I worked for an Israeli guy," Dubus said. "I'm a real carpenter. I was licensed."

Like Tom, he also built his own house, in Newbury, which Dubus is now fixing so his elderly mother can move in. Also like Tom, whose father died of a heart attack when he was young, Dubus was raised by a single mother.

But unlike Tom, with whom he shares an intense work ethic, Dubus has never lost the ability to support himself and his family.

He graduated from college before going to work with his brother, and his writing eventually earned him a job in 1990 teaching creative writing, initially at Emerson College.

"I couldn't believe I got paid to sit in a room and talk," Dubus said. "I've been a professor at UMass Lowell for 20 years. If I get sick and cancel a class, I still get paid. In the old days if I got sick, I might not get paid."

After publishing two collections of short stories, his first novel, "House of Sand and Fog" from 1999, was a bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. The work was also made into a successful movie that came out in 2003 and received three nominations for Academy Awards.

That was followed by three more novels, including "Such Kindness," the memoir and another collection of short stories, all of which have been well reviewed and sold well.

But the fear that his life could fall apart at any minute, as it did for Tom one day while he was nailing shingles into a roof, means that Dubus has never taken any of his success for granted.

"I grew up in first world poverty with a single mom in the Merrimack Valley," Dubus said. "A writer writes so much from fears and emotions and the subconscious. Even though I've had a comfortable life since 'Sand and Fog,' part of me is still waiting for the landlord to knock on the door."

But for all his parallels with Tom, Dubus said the source of any work of fiction is ultimately mysterious, and his character takes a much different path from his own.

"The thing I love about creative writing is, it's a wonderful act of discovery," he said. "I never know what's going to happen next."

Indeed, Dubus said that after he wrote the opening scene of "Such Kindness," where Tom is stealing trash from a banker's house in Andover, he had no idea where the novel was headed.

"Is it going to be another dark, violent book like I've written?" Dubus said. "He becomes someone other than me, with my temper."

Where Tom differs also from the Biblical Job is in the way he responds to his troubles, which doesn't rely on faith in the divine but is grounded in the world in which he lives.

Tom describes himself as an exile at one point, and he especially feels like an outsider in Section 8 housing, where he often judges his neighbors.

"For the thousandth time I think that I do not belong here," Tom says. "I do not belong here with any of these people."

But in his fallen state, Tom discovers an ability to connect with others through kindness, which opens his eyes.

In part this means appreciating that his neighbors in subsidized housing, like himself, all have a unique story about how they came to be where they are.

Tom also comes to recognize that they are doing as much as they can with what they have, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

To some degree, he is forced into these realizations by losing his car, computer, phone and ability to walk very far, so that he must rely on help from others for many of the things that he needs.

The result is that, while discovering a new family of sorts through these connections, Tom also learns to repair his relationship with his son and ex-wife, until he is overwhelmed by his good fortune.

"To receive gifts of this magnitude is becoming almost unbearable, but what's there to do but ride the wave of them like the feather off the wing of some white bird flying toward the sun?" he says.