Born March 4: David Plante

Since his fiction debut 41 years ago, The Ghost of Henry James, David Plante has written a new book every couple years. His best known works form the gay-vague Francoeur trilogy -- The Family, The Country, The Woods -- about a French-Canadian American family with Native American ancestry and seven sons, just like his own. In 2009 Plante published his 19th book, The Pure Lover [[Kindle]], a remarkably concise memoir of his nearly forty years with his Greek partner Nikos Stangos, four years his senior. Richard Labonté chose it as a favorite of 2009 and Pulitzer- winning critic Michael Dirda said, "out of the fragments, Proustian moments and sharply felt memories of a happy and painful past, David Plante has made a lovely book, joyful, plangent and true."