Empire Falls, Maine is a town that's best days are long behind it. The mill and factory that used to be the main employers have been closed for years, and the only person around with two dimes to rub together is the very rich Francine Whiting who essentially owns and controls everything worth having in the area. Miles Robey was on the verge of earning his college degree and escaping Empire Falls forever when he returned home to care for his dying mother and ended up working for Mrs. Whiting as the manager of the Empire Grill. 
 Two decades later and Miles is a middle aged punching bag still slinging burgers who probably bursts into tears every time he hears Pearl Jam's Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. His selfish wife Janine is divorcing Miles to marry health club owner Walt Comeau who likes to stop by the Empire Grill every afternoon to rub it in. Miles' father Max is the town neer-do-well who is impervious to guilt and is constantly trying to get money out of him. Town cop Jimmy Minty starts approaching Miles under the guise of friendship but has some long simmering grudge against him. Worst of all is that Miles has to report the slender profits to Mrs. Whiting even as she refuses to pay for any improvements to the increasingly shabby diner. The one bright spot in life for Miles is his teen-aged daughter Tick who he loves dearly and has a close relationship with. 
 This is the first book I've read by Russo (Although I've seen the movie version of Nobody's Fool.), and I absolutely loved it. At least until the ending, but we'll get to that shortly. The depiction of a small blue collar town slowly going under was done incredibly well from the opening that describes how Empire Falls has been ruled by the Whitings for generations and how heir C.B. went from his dream of wanting to be a poet and artist in Mexico to running the family business and marrying Francine. 
 The characters are another big selling point because there's a lot more than I described in the brief summary above, and all of them seem rich and fully developed. It's to Russo's credit that he was able to make a cast that includes some absolutely infuriating and unpleasant people and make you at least understand all of them. There were times where I wished that Miles would push his father out of a moving car or toss a pan full of hot grease into the face of Walt, but there was also a certain obnoxious charm to them most of the time. 
 Miles is the heart of the book, and I was a little worried that I wasn't going to like him much in the early going. I'm generally not a fan of passive characters that are so wrapped up in regrets and unearned guilt that they're essentially just pawns for anyone looking to use them, and Miles fits this description to a T. Being raised Catholic by his selfless mother has convinced him that wanting anything is practically a sin, and he's almost pathologically incapable of standing up for himself. However, Miles' brother is constantly calling him out for taking the path of least resistance and urging him to at least try to change his circumstances. That awareness of his nature and the flashes of backbone that Miles shows at times make him sympathetic despite being pretty much a doormat. 
 As far as the ending (view spoiler)[ I loved that Mrs. Whiting had essentially turned Miles into an indentured servant because of the affair his mother had with her husband. Miles seemed exceptionally slow on the uptake there, but the hardest place to see a trap is from inside it. 
 However, I was less pleased with other elements. John Voss shooting the people in the high school was the kind of dramatic moment that it would take for Miles to make a big gesture like leaving Empire Falls to protect Tick. So while I wasn't sold on the idea of this character driven story about small town secrets and regrets turning into a ripped-from-the-headlines tragedy, it made sense in that respect. But I didn't like how everything got kind of deus ex machina after that. Mrs. Whiting drowns, Jimmy Minty is disgraced, Zach gets shipped off to Seattle, Janine leaves Walt all while David and Bea get the new restaurant going. That all just seemed a little too convenient for Miles. (hide spoiler)] 
 Despite those complaints this was still an exceptionally well written book with that did a great job establishing and exploring all the tangled relationships in one dying town, and it has enough humor to keep everything from getting overly grim and depressing for the most part. It's easy to see why it won a Pulitzer.