Wally Lamb is an American author of several novels including “I’ll Take You There,” “She’s Come Undone” and “I Know This Much Is True;” the last two were both selected for Oprah’s Book Club. He was the director of the Writing Center at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich and has taught Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.  “I Know This Much Is True” is the bestselling novel about identical brothers Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey, who suffers from schizophrenia.  Dominick struggles to take care of his twin brother while discovering the truth about his own family.  It has been adapted into a limited television series that will air on HBO and premieres on Sunday May 10. Mark Ruffalo stars in the double role of Dominick and Thomas.

According to Amazon, in “I Know This Much Is True,” Dominick Birdsey, is a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut.  He finds his subdued life suddenly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself—a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily’s Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin.