If the Beatles Got Back Together: PW Talks with Tom Barbash

Barbash’s novel The Dakota Winters (Ecco, Dec.) is about a family living in the storied Dakota building in the days leading up to the assassination of John Lennon.

Why a novel about a talk show host living in the Dakota in 1980?

I grew up five blocks from the Dakota at a time when the Upper West Side was still pretty dicey. We had a welfare hotel on my block where a serial killer murdered seven women. We also had Philip Roth living a few buildings away. I wanted also to explore the year leading up to the assassination—1980—when so much happened. A talk show host like the novel’s protagonist, Buddy Winter, seemed like the right lens through which to do that.

Source: By Ken Salikof /publishersweekly.com

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