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The scope is at a biographical level, where later books are a little more ambitious. The result is a keen, humerous, sympathetic and warm insight into a nucleus group of people living and surviving the decline of small, New England mill town America.
Young Ned Hall, the narrator, is a child when the story opens in upstate Mohawk, New York, in the 1950s, the son of Sam Hall, a veteran who has returned from the war with a desire to celebrate--"Not celebrating victory...celebrating life. His." Sam, a drunk, a gambler, a philanderer, and eventually a divorced father, is at the bottom of any insurance company's "risk pool," a man both self-absorbed and self-destructive. Popular in bars and pool halls, Sam "involves men in his lunacy by sheer force of his will." Ned's mother, on the other hand, is sensitive, defeated by her life, and often under psychiatric care. When his mother suffers a breakdown and his previously absent father claims him, Ned manages somehow to adapt to the uncertainties of his new life and survive his unusual adolescence.
Mohawk, a blue-collar town, is filled with people whose stories come alive as they intersect with Sam Hall and Ned. Colorful descriptions of the town's sights, sounds, and smells; lively evocations of smoke-filled bars, pool halls, and card games; and hilarious accounts of obligatory fishing trips and treks in the woods emphasize the differences between Ned's reality and the more nurturing environment he might have had in a more stable home and family.
Russo extends Ned's story beyond the limits of Mohawk in the second half of the book when Ned goes off to college and into the professional world, pointedly illustrating Ned's self-destructive behavior, his worries about his fidelity (or lack of it), and his tendency to keep moving, even into his late thirties. Though Ned distances himself from his parents and from Mohawk, he eventually begins to wonder how much he may be a product of the ultimate risk pool, his genetic heritage.
An odd assortment of characters comes alive through Russo's dialogue, which conveys their personalities, relationships, resentments, and past history and creates a panoramic study of both people and place. His themes of identity, personal responsibility, and connection to family are fully developed within this sprawling saga and its personal stories. The second half of the novel, which takes place outside of Mohawk, does lose some of its charm when its connections to place are lost, but the novel richly rewards those looking for a big novel with well-drawn characters and the wry humor which evolves from real life. Mary Whipple
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