Risk Pool

Richard Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his fifth novel, Empire Falls. He is also the author of Mohawk, Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man, Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic, as well as a collection of stories, The Whore’s Child. His original screenplay is the basis for Rowan Atkinson’s film Keeping Mum. He lives with his wife in Maine and in Boston.

If Russo's books possessed only their big-hearted, endlessly revisitable characters, that would be enough. That they also possess belting story lines about broken families, comically recalcitrant pensioners, small-town decay and the indelibility of roots sometimes seems like an act of unparalleled literary generosity