The Risk Pool

us astray now.”
    On the way out I stopped to look at the snapshots that people had been putting up with thumbtacks on the bulletin board. About half of them I’d’ve liked to swipe, but I took only the one that had been published in the
Mohawk Republican
in 1960, that first winter I’d lived with my father, where I appeared to be holding the white convertible about a foot and a half off the snowy pavement with one finger. In the newspaper the photograph had been grainy, but here the original was clear and I saw in it now what hadn’t been clear before. My father had instructed me to mug for the camera, which I did, but not Sam Hall. He had one hand on my shoulder and was looking down at me proudly, as if he believed me to be truly capable of wondrous things.
    I had intended to stay the night in Mohawk, but decided against the idea, preferring to spend the night in the Albany Airport if I had to. But luck was with me. There was a red-eye flight to the city and I walked right on. A message in my wife’s small hand awaited me on the refrigerator door when I arrived. I went directly to the hospital where I found Leigh, looking tired but beautiful, the kind of girl who could flat-out corner the pussy market. She had the baby on her breast, and she turned it over so I could see my son’s little stem. It was a touching moment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    R ICHARD R USSO lives with his wife in Camden, Maine, and in Boston. In 2002 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
Empire Falls
.
    He is available for lectures and readings. For information regarding his availability, please visit www.knopfspeakersbureau.com or call 212-572-2013.

New from
    Richard Russo
    That Old Cape Magic

    It’s the end of what seems like a perfectly lovely wedding weekend on the Cape, but for Griffin, the middle-aged father of the bride, it marks the beginning of his descent into a failed marriage, a confrontation with his parents’ deaths, and the realization that the life he has does not measure up to the life he thought he wanted. With moments of great comedy alternating with others of rueful understanding,
That Old Cape Magic
is unlike anything Richard Russo has ever written.

    Available August 2009 in hardcover from Knopf
$25.95 • 272 pages • 978-0-375-41496-1
    Please visit www.aaknopf.com