Finished: Empire Falls (Russo) Pulitzer Prize winner about the inhabitants of a once prospering, now defunct industrial town in Maine. Going back three generations in the Whiting clan, the wealthy founders of the town and owners of the textile companies that keep the town afloat, the tale of their influence, power trips and selfishness is told directly through the people they have affected most. We see most of the story through the eyes and experiences of Miles Roby, now forty-two and manager of the Empire Falls Grill. His life is intricately woven with Francine Whiting, the widow of the last Whiting male heir. She now owns and runs most everything in the town, including the Empire Grill. She had also been the employer of Miles' mother, Grace Roby, when Miles was in high school and college. Grace had worked her fingers to the bone, and despite her worthless husband, Max's non-efforts, had seen to it that Miles got out of Empire Falls and off to college. When Grace was diagnosed with terminal cancer with Miles one year shy of getting his college degree, Miles came home to care for his mother in her final days and never went back for his degree. Twenty years later, he's divorced from his wife, Janine, and has a daughter, Tick, who is a sophomore in high school. The books is very, very good and shares chapters from the viewpoints of the different characters, telling in humorous and compelling prose the thoughts, fears, hopes, disappointments, feelings, etc. of each of the characters. We get to know Max, Miles' self-centered, codger of a father; Tick, his sensitive, independent daughter; Janine, his weight-losing, sexually hungry, engaged to the town blowhard ex-wife; Francine Whiting, the hard-nosed, cold, shrewd, but not feelingless town matriarch; Jimmy Minty, the deceitful deputy sheriff and childhood nemesis of Miles; his son Zack Minty, Tick's ex-boyfriend and class A jerk; David Roby, Miles' younger brother who helps him run the grill; Charlene Gardiner, Empire Falls waitress who Miles has had a crush on since high school; John Voss, the emotionally stunted, abused in childhood, bullied in high school, ticking time bomb schoolmate of Tick's; Cindy Whiting, Francine's daughter, crippled, physically and emotionally, who has always loved Miles Roby; and, in flashback, Charley Maine, the rich, charismatic man who nearly swept Grace Roby off her feet and away from Max when Miles was little...who turns out to be none other than C.B. Whiting, husband of Francine. As Miles struggles to make ends meet by keeping the Empire Grill going, he tries to juggle keeping up with Tick, volunteering at his church by painting the steeple, keeping tabs on his father, and bowing down to Francine Whiting as she has promised to eventually leave the Empire Grill to him. The book itself was not a page turner. I could only read a few chapters at a time, and then I had to put it down and process all that I was reading about each of the characters. I'm going to keep with my promise to myself to keep my recaps shorter, so will not recap the entire book. I will just say that I was lulled into the sense of this just being a book about these people's interactions and lives when a dramatic incident occurs involving a school shooting that thrusts the main characters into chaos and within months, resolution to many of their lives as they make decisions to move forward after realizing life is so fleeting. I'm very glad to have read this book, but glad I'm finally done as well. :-)