My Dinner with Andre.(Author Profile)(Andre Dubus III)(Interview)

"If you're going out with Andre, don't plan on being home before dawn," Bill Rusin, Norton's head of sales tells me. I'm intrigued. Anticipation for Dubus III's new novel, The Garden of Last Days, is running high. I've seen Dubus in action, at the prepublication lunch in New York City: he's movie-star handsome, his charm in front of the crowd so palpable it's almost suspect.

Dubus's new book, Garden--coming this June nine years after his megahit, House of Sand and Fog (over two million copies and still selling), a 1999 National Book award finalist and Oprah pick--is about 9/11, not the actual event, but the days leading up to it. Having read that the terrorists …