Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Empire Falls is the second book by Richard Russo that I’ve written about in my pandemic prattling. The other one was Straight Man, which was a humorous satire on academia. Empire Falls is a soberer reflection of day-to-day life in a small, fading town in Maine. There are five major characters with another fifteen who play important roles in depicting the close links between and among the people who live In Empire Falls.
One of the book’s strengths is the author’s detailed depictions of the town’s residents.
Much of the town is literally owned by Francine Whiting, the widow of a dead captain of industry whose family presided over Empire Falls back in the glory days when mills polluted the river but gave people decent jobs.
The protagonist is Miles Roby, who runs the local Empire Grill which is owned by Mrs. Whiting. He’s a decent fellow, in a failing marriage, who has pretty much done as Mrs. Whiting has demanded for the past twenty years, beginning when he left college during senior year to come back home to take care of his dying mother, Grace. It was supposed to be a temporary gig but Miles never left.
His wife, Janine, is leaving him for an older man who gives her great sex. Their sixteen-year-old daughter,<strong> Tick (Christina)</strong>, is in high school. While she has a lot of the insecurities of most teenagers, she actually has her act together better than most of the adults in the book. Miles's brother, David, is a recovering drug addict, who is the main cook at the grill.
When the book opens, Miles and Tick, have just returned from vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, an annual family event, although this year soon-to-be-ex-wife Janine wasn’t with them. Miles, who is not in great financial shape, stays with old friends who own a place on the Vineyard. Miles’ dream is to buy a bookstore there but he never quite figures out how to pay for it.
One of the more eccentric characters in the book is Miles' father, Max, who wasn’t home much when Miles and David were kids. Max was an itinerant painter who always was off somewhere on a job. Actually, most of the time he wasn’t doing any work, just chasing women and taking it easy. Until she died young of cancer, the mother, Grace, was the breadwinner with a real job at one of the mills. Max was away in Florida, seeking ladies, when Grace died at home with Miles by her side.
One of the reasons Miles stayed at the grill was the promise Mrs. Whiting made to him when he started managing the place. She said that, not too long in the future, she would give him the grill. Twenty years later, there are no signs that she has any plans to do that. Miles is cowed by Mrs. Whiting. She is intimidating and literally owns the town. He is nervous even talking to her about business matters, like the ongoing need to get a new automatic dishwasher to replace the ancient one that barely works. (As a professional dishwasher at Goldilox, I’m not sure that I like those new-fangled machines that take jobs away from hard-working people.)
Walt Comeau, also known as the Silver Fox because of his hair, is Janine’s new beau. He runs a local gym and is in great shape for an older guy. Janine met him when she was working out, something she does several times a day. Walt wears tight T-shirts to show off his great torso. He hangs around the grill a lot, singing Perry Como songs. His presence there is kind of strange since he is about to marry Miles’ ex-wife, but things are OK with everyone.
Father Mark is the local priest who happens to be gay. Miles, unlike the rest of his family, is a regular church goer, but he and Mark’s friendship goes beyond that. Mark takes care of the retired pastor, Father Tom, who has dementia and is pretty mean to everyone. Apparently, the good priest was pretty mean to everyone even when he didn’t have dementia.
Tick has art class with Mrs. Roderigue, a teacher who organizes the students by how she thinks they will behave. Tick, who is in the high academic track at school, is in the group with the problem kids, probably so she can be a stabilizing influence. Candace Burke and John Voss are both kids from the poor side of town. Candace spends all of her time talking about her latest boyfriends, including one who is in jail for something.
John is quiet and brooding. Because of some scheduling problem, Tick and John end up eating lunch together in a room by themselves. (The school principal Otto Mayer, a friend of her father’s, had implored Tick to eat lunch with Voss and she agreed.) She doesn’t really befriend him – he is strange – but she does get to know him a bit. He lives with his grandmother. He usually doesn’t have any food with him for lunch, so Tick splits her sandwich with him. She can tell that John has no money so she gets her dad to hire him as a dishwasher/busboy. During lunch, former “friend” Zack Minty, stares at the two of them in a very intimidating way, which doesn’t add to the fun. Zack ends up bullying John a lot.
Tick is pursued by Zack, a football player who is the son of a local police officer, Jimmy Minty, who went to school with Miles. Tick thinks that Zack is a jerk but does hang out with him a bit. She never has much of a relationship with him and his crew, but she does want to be with the cool kids so she does go to parties and such. Miles's father, Max, is always looking for handouts to supplement his Social Security income. He often takes money from Miles without telling him, and he sometimes works at the grill for pay. He hangs out at the local bar, Callahan’s, which is owned by Janine’s mother, Bea. The bar is within walking distance of his senior housing apartment, a good thing for a drunk. After a patron leaves, Max goes and finishes any beer left in the glass. He is a classy guy.
A fading town One of the recurring themes in the book is the contrast between the Empire Falls of the 1950s and 1960s and 2000, when the book is set. The local paper, the <em>Gazette, </em>periodically prints pictures of glory days gone by, in the 1960s and 1970s when the mills were cranking out cloth and good jobs for all. The mills are long gone, sold to foreign investors who closed them and moved the manufacturing equipment to factories down South. There used to be two strong Catholic parishes; now there is barely one. The town’s population is way down, and it’s hard to get enough kids to play on the sports teams. The good news is that with the textile mills closed, the river is no longer polluted by bright green and red and blue dyes, and the fish are starting to come back.
Miles sometimes thinks about leaving, but on balance he’s pretty satisfied. Tick is a great daughter. His brother, David, had a serious accident while impaired. That was hitting the bottom for him, and he’s been sober for years. Getting divorced is not fun, but Miles and Janine became distant over the years. He knows that he never really loved her the way real love should be. He wishes he actually owned the grill, but it’s doing well as he expands the menu and brings in more customers. He takes satisfaction in doing a good job, even if it's for Mrs. Whiting.
Janine will get the house in the divorce, so Miles is living in the apartment over the grill. He and Janine will have joint custody of Tick, although Tick can't stand the Silver Fox and will probably spend most of her time hanging around her father.
The trip to Martha’s Vineyard When Miles was nine, he and his mother went to Martha’s Vineyard for a short vacation. They didn't have a lot of money but Grace had bought a nice dress that she brought with her. She was attractive and when they were dining, lots of men stared at her, something men did back in the late 1960s. A distinguished looking older man came over when he overheard Miles complaining about the restaurant not having steamer clams. The gentleman recommended another clam dish, and Grace invited him to join them. He was Charles Mayne, and he spent time with them over the next few days. Miles saw his mother sneaking out of the hotel room at night but didn’t understand what that meant. He was upset at his mother for being nice to another man. Grace explained that Max didn’t accompany them because he was in jail and wouldn’t be out for a while and when he did get out, nothing would have changed.
Back in Empire Falls Mrs. Whiting summoned Miles to her house. It turns out that her daughter, Cindy, was back in town and wanted to see Miles, whom she pined over in high school. Cindy had been run over by a car when she was a child and she now needed canes to walk. Doctors can’t quite figure out why Cindy didn’t have a better recovery from the surgeries to fix her legs. Her mother says that Cindy was just too lazy to do the rehab work. As a true Whiting, she expected everyone else to do it for her. Mrs. Whiting spoke to Miles about his impending divorce and told him that the only reason he married Janine was so that he wouldn’t have to marry Cindy who was infatuated with him. Mrs. Whiting told Miles that it was no accident that Cindy had suddenly returned to Empire Falls after she heard that Miles was getting divorced. Mrs. Whiting gave Miles fair warning about her daughter’s intentions.
Meanwhile, Miles invited Cindy Whiting to the annual big football game between Fairfield, a neighboring but much more upscale town (with a college!), and Empire Falls. It’s not clear why he did this. He was probably just being nice to her.
Miles was repainting St. Catherine’s church for Father Mark and enlisted his father to help out. Although Miles wasn’t being paid, Max insisted on being compensated. While Max was working on the church, he and the senile Father Tom became buddies.
Charlene Gardiner is a waitress at the Empire Grill. She is a few years older than Miles and she’s been married and divorced four times. Ever since high school, he’s had a crush on her, but his brother, David, is actually in a relationship with her. Charlene can charm anybody.
Brother David took over the cooking duties and really improved the menu. Now professors from the university in neighboring Fairfield regularly come by for dinner and revenue is way up. The next logical step is to get a liquor license, but Miles never seems to be able to muster up the courage to discuss that with Mrs. Whiting. This is a sore point with David, who urges his brother to at least ask her. Charlene keeps the peace but notes that Miles is about the most cautious person she’s ever seen. Miles confesses to Charlene that he’s taking Cindy to the game. He expects ridicule but she thinks that is really nice.
The big football game The big game between Fairfield and Empire Falls is relatively uneventful. Cindy drops her cane from the high-up seats and Miles has to go get it and runs into Jimmy Minty, the local cop who has issues with Miles and vice versa. Jimmy points out to Cindy how great his son, Zack, is doing at linebacker and he also has to explain to her what a linebacker is. Young Zack is aggressive and puts a wicked hit on the opposing quarterback for which he gets a penalty. Jimmy thinks it's great that his boy is such a tough guy. Miles and Cindy aren’t wild about the tough guy hit, and Jimmy and Miles end up in a bit of a quarrel. When the game is over, Cindy trips and Miles keeps her from tumbling to the ground. She’s back in love with him.
After the game, Jimmy and Miles sort of apologize to each other. Jimmy is consumed with becoming the next police chief and seems upset because everyone likes Miles and few people like Jimmy.
Soon-to-be-ex-wife Janelle plans to make a grand entrance after the game begins, but there aren’t too many seats available so that doesn’t work. Because she's a workout nut and diet-obsessed, she looks good for 40 years old, and she’s not wearing too many clothes so as to display her hot body in the 40-degree weather (that would actually be a very cold body).
Janelle looks fine but she is not happy at the game because she just found out that the Silver Fox, her husband-to-be, is 60 years old, not in his late 40’s as he told her. Janelle is concerned that the good sex may not last because he’s older than she thought. She’s also starting to figure out that Walt is not a rich guy as she was led to believe. He doesn’t own much of anything. He rents and leases his business property and equipment, and when she tried to cash a check he gave her, it bounced.
In the fall, Father Mark has a crisis. Father Tom has disappeared. Mark had gone to Portland to have dinner with an activist he met at a protest, and the housekeeper went home, thinking that Father Tom was in bed. He wasn’t. The parish car was also missing, as was Miles’s father, Max. Putting two and two together, they figure out that the wayward couple is on their way to Florida where Max likes to spend part of the winter. Legally, Father Tom never transferred the title of the car over to Mark so technically it’s Tom’s car and not a stolen vehicle. The housekeeper soon realizes that the two geriatrics took the Sunday collection money to finance their jaunt. Miles confirmed that Max had left his apartment with a duffel bag, so the old guys were definitely heading to Florida.
Father Mark is increasingly attracted to the man he met at the protest and he’s trying to square that with being a priest. Miles recently told him about Grace’s fling with the stranger on Martha’s Vineyard over thirty years ago. Mark said that for Grace to find a bit of happiness, even for a few days, was OK, that people shouldn’t feel guilty about finding joy. Mark is perhaps setting up the rationale for his future behavior.
While Miles was doing some work around the church, scraping off layers of paint from the steeple, something clicked. His talk with Father Mark about his mother’s Martha’s Vineyard fling had jarred his memory. He realized that Charles Mayne, the man Grace had met, was really C. B. Whiting, Francine Whiting’s reclusive husband who had abandoned his family to live in Mexico for most of his life. Miles realizes that his mother and C. B. had a relationship before the trip to the Vineyard. That’s why she bought the nice dress.
Grace and Mrs. Whiting Back in the early 1970s, the mills closed and Grace Roby lost her bookkeeping job. Since, on good days, hubby Max was useless, she needed to find employment. Mrs. Whiting needed help with Cindy as well as wanting a personal assistant so she hired Grace. Miles was surprised to see that her mother, if not happy, was at least content with her new situation. She became almost obsessed with keeping the Whiting household functioning smoothly and made a point of asking Miles to be nice to Cindy who was pretty much ostracized at school. Miles thought that his mother had found another family.
Just as she began working for Mrs. Whiting, Grace confessed her affair and apologized. Mrs. Whiting already knew about it. She never had much use for her husband. She saw him as spoiled and weak, just the opposite of her. She was not unhappy that he decided to spend most of his life in Mexico. After a brief discussion, they each agreed not to bring it up again. That was that. C. B. had conveniently committed suicide a few years earlier during one of his rare trips to Empire Falls, so there was no chance that he’d show up and cause a stir.
Grace kept thinking that she was disappointing Mrs. Whiting and expected to get fired. Mrs. Whiting was smart enough to know that she was a difficult person to satisfy and appreciated the good job that Grace was doing, especially with Cindy. In addition to her other duties, Grace was a nanny to Cindy, who demanded a lot of attention. Despite that, Grace grew fond of Cindy, something Cindy’s mother did not seem to be. She even convinced Miles to take Cindy to the senior prom.
The wedding at the gym Back to the present, Janine and Walt got married. It wasn’t quite the lush affair Janine wanted. They were married by a justice of the peace in Walt’s gym, which saved him the cost of renting a hall. Miles went and actually felt pretty good once she was officially married. In a bizarre move, Janine had asked Miles to give her away since she couldn't find anyone else. He demurred but did tell her that he was looking forward to the ceremony. He also convinced Tick to show up, something she did not want to do.
During the recent Martha’s Vineyard vacation, Tick had met Donny, a boy from Indiana. They seemed to get along and exchanged addresses. For months, she heard nothing from him and she was hesitant about getting in touch with him. Finally, Donny sent her a letter with his email address and they started to correspond. Donny was going to visit Boston soon. Tick got Miles to agree to bring her to Boston to see her friend. She was happy.
Max called Miles from Florida. He and the senile priest were in Key West. Father Tom came in second in an Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest. It turns out that they didn’t drive to Florida. They dropped the car off in nearby Camden and crewed on a boat going south. Tom, who only fell overboard once on the trip, now hears confessions at the end of the bar every afternoon.
Zack Minty and the cool guys can’t stand John Voss. He is weird and he and Tick had their art picked for a big show, which irritated Zack, who teases Voss relentlessly. John is very strange but he’s doing OK at the grill.
During a flashback, we learn that Mrs. Whiting called Miles at college senior year to tell him that his mother was dying of cancer. He enjoyed college, especially being around friends who had normal families, and he rarely went home. Over the years, Grace really had become part of the Whiting family, dysfunctional as it was. Grace spent most of her time away from her house, essentially abandoning David, who became angry and surly and eventually addicted to substances.
Otto Meyer, who grew up with Miles, is now the high school principal and he has a problem. No one can figure out who John Voss lives with. Voss had been horribly abused by his drug-addled parents and ended up with his grandmother. Otto does some digging and realizes that there is no grandmother. John lives alone in a house that looks abandoned. Otto tells the police chief Bill Daws, who senses that the grandmother died months earlier, but they don’t know where the body is. After a search, they find the decomposed body in a landfill. Meanwhile, John Voss has disappeared.
Janine is working at Walt’s gym, making smoothies and pouring beers for guys faking workmen’s compensation injuries. She is having serious second thoughts about her new husband. He is useless to talk to, and being good in bed will only get you so far in a relationship. After leaving work she sees Tick and offers her a ride. It did not go well as Tick took a shot at the Silver Fox, causing Janine to stop the car and demand that Tick get out. Unfortunately, Mrs. Silver Fox started up again while Tick was trying to get her backpack out of the back seat. Tick was pulled to the ground, not seriously hurt, but seriously outraged at her mother.
Miles moves on Miles has decided that the only way to improve his life is to leave the Empire Grill and do something else. He’s sick of being under Mrs. Whiting’s thumb and he feels some guilt about having been present decades earlier when his mother and C. W. were having their affair. Miles knows that Callahan’s, owned by Janine’s mother, Bea, is in trouble. The place needs fixing up and there is no serious food service although there is a full kitchen. He wants to become partners with Bea, bring over his workers, and upgrade Callahan’s, which does have a valuable liquor license. He hasn’t told Mrs. Whiting about this yet. There have been signs that Mrs. Whiting is going to sell off most of what she owns, so brother David thinks that she’ll be delighted to be rid of the grill.
Miles gets the bad news that state inspectors have come in to shut down Callahan’s because of code violations and allegations of serving underage kids, specifically Tick, who sometimes goes to her grandmother's bar to do homework, not to drink. Miles is certain that Mrs. Whiting is behind the sudden shutdown move, that she must have somehow figured out that Miles was about to leave the grill. That would remove him from her control, something she cannot abide.
Miles goes off to confront Mrs. Whiting and to give his two-week notice of leaving the grill. At the estate he’s stopped by police officer Jimmy Minty, who, as it turns out, also does security for the Whitings. They get into a fight and Minty arrests Miles. Mrs. Whiting is with some big-shot Boston businessmen, but she comes out to see what’s happening. Miles gives her his notice and she pooh-poohs him, suggesting that he think carefully about it. He asks her if the fact that her husband preferred Grace to Francine is what’s behind her decades of controlling behavior. She seems nonplussed as she reminds Miles that she forgave Grace “for her trespass.”
Tick is worried about John Voss and about her other classmate, Candace, who is in a funk. For the first time, Tick goes to visit Candace at home, which is a mess. Her mother and her latest boyfriend are buzzed by some substance and belittle Candace as she goes out for a walk with Tick. Candace asks if she and Tick are good friends now and Tick agrees.
Tick’s wisdom Tick is thinking about life a lot these days. She now sees that although her parents' separation seemed to come out of the blue, “she realizes it had been a slow process, rooted in dissatisfaction and need -– in their personalities, really. Maybe the whole thing had come on <em>Tick </em>suddenly, but in reality, her mother’s slow march from eye contact to flirtation to infidelity to divorce to remarriage was a Stairmaster journey whose culmination was probably the beginning of another climb that would prove just as slow and inexorable.” She also sees “that no matter how slow things go, you’ll always be slower.” Much of life sneaks up on you,
Tick and Candace go to Mrs. Roderigue’s art class. Tick is relieved to look out the window and see John Voss coming across the field towards the school. She realizes that for the past five days people have been looking for John Voss but hoping not to find him. John comes into the room, pulls out a revolver, and shoots people. He kills John Dibble (Candace’s latest boyfriend), Mrs. Roderigue, and Principal Meyer who bursts in and jumps in front of Tick as John pulls the trigger.
Miles and Jimmy Minty are in the same hospital room for some perverse reason, but Minty leaves after a day or so. Cindy visits Miles and he recalls that she was his mother’s constant companion and nurse while she was dying. Cindy is moving to Augusta to be with a man she’s seeing. Miles feels that he wasn’t much of a friend to her but Cindy appreciates the relationship that they did have.
Soon Chief Daws comes in and takes Miles to the school where John Voss shot people. Miles is shocked but finds Tick off in a corner, traumatized. She finally recognizes him and he carries her out of the room.
Miles and Tick left town and drove to Martha’s Vineyard and stayed in his friends’ house for the winter. Tick went to the local high school and gradually put the shooting behind her, which is pretty unrealistic. When a person is as traumatized as she was, you don’t come out of it in a few months by yourself, even on the Vineyard.
People from Empire Falls left them alone. By spring, John Voss had been declared incompetent to stand trial and was placed in a mental institution. Candace was still recovering from being shot, and was in a wheelchair.
The Empire Grill closed and Callahan’s did expand its food menu and hire Miles’s employees. Mrs. Whiting sold most of the town to big developers, and she sold the closed mill to a credit card company that would turn it into a customer call center. The winter after the shooting was brutal, with lots of snow that suddenly melted in the spring causing a lot of damage to the town. As it turns out, Mrs. Whiting was caught in a flash flood and drowned.
Back on Martha’s Vineyard, Miles goes to the Summer House, the inn where he and his mother met C. W. Whiting decades ago. Miles has a dream about Whiting and his mother and how much C. W. loved her but it couldn’t work out. When Miles wakes up, he realizes that he has to get back to his life in Empire Falls and make things work.
Miles is sitting at a local restaurant in Vineyard Haven, MV, when he sees his father walking down the street. Max is back from Florida so he tracked Miles down. He knew that Miles loved the Vineyard and figured out that’s where he’d go to hide. A few days later, Miles gets the news that Mrs. Whiting drowned in the spring melt. The witch is dead. Max wants to get back for the funeral, so Tick, Max, and Miles get into his ancient car and go home.
Bob’s Take
It won a Pulitzer. Empire Falls is certainly well written, but it’s also very well crafted, which is why it won the 2002 Pulitzer Award. In many of his books Richard Russo writes about blue-collar, rust-belt communities that have faded, of which the town of Empire Falls is an exemplar. We’re all familiar with what has happened over the last fifty years to many cities and towns across the land. Manufacturing plants closed and the local economy dipped. At one time, this small Maine town had bustling mills and all of the supporting businesses that made the area flourish. The mills went away and all that was left were small stores and restaurants and Francine Whiting, a brittle older woman who owned most of what was left and controlled much of what happened to the locals.
Lots of interesting people. There are about twenty important characters in the book, and each of them is described beautifully. The town is like a petri dish - everyone knows each other, almost intimately, and they often grow - or don’t grow - together.
The main figure, Miles Roby, is almost tragic. He’s a nice, thoughtful guy who left college during his senior year to be with his dying mother. As Bea, Miles’s soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law and soon-to-be business partner, observes, he “was about the nicest, saddest man in all of Empire Falls, a man so good-natured that not even being married to her daughter, Janine, had ruined him.”
While everyone likes Miles, most people think that there’s a spark missing. He has been at the same job running the Empire Grill for twenty years and is afraid of Mrs. Whiting, his landlord who enjoys keeping him in his place.
There’s an ongoing sidebar about how Miles (and sometimes his father, Max) paint the church. Miles is fine with most of the work but he is afraid to climb the steeple to paint it, a pretty good metaphor about his reluctance to try to climb higher in life.
Real people. Russo writes a lot about people as they are, not as they should be or want to be or as others want them to be:
Miles studied his father, whose stubble had a strange orange tint. “Your beard’s full of food. Cheetos?“
"So what.”
He had a point, and Mrs. Whiting, Miles sadly reflected, was probably right. People were just themselves, their efforts to be otherwise notwithstanding. Max was just programmed to be Max, to have food in his beard. Looked at from another angle, it probably was admirable that his father never battled his own nature, never expected more of himself than experience had taught him was wise, thereby avoiding disappointment and self-recrimination. It was a fine, sensible way to live, really much more sensible than Miles’s manner as he went about his business, disappointed by his failure to scramble up ladders, blaming himself for his wife’s infidelity. Perversely maneuvering himself into situations that guaranteed aggravation, if not outright distress. Maybe, as the old lady had suggested, it was all that catechism, its rote insistence on subordinating one’s will to God’s, so many of the lessons administered by the now senile priest who was seated a few yards away and giving him the evil eye.
We’ve been there. Many of us have been to places like Empire Falls, towns and cities that have seen better days. Some have adapted and come back; many haven’t figured out what to do.
My family lived in Bangor, Maine, in the early 1960s when it was a bustling small city. There were manufacturing plants and a huge paper mill where my father was an executive. Dow Air Force Base was home to thousands of military personnel. In 1968, the Air Force closed Dow, pulling millions of dollars out of the local economy. Over the next ten to twenty years, the mills went out of business. By the 1980s, Bangor was hollowed out, but local leaders organized themselves and made the city an entertainment destination that has energized the local economy. Other small cities, like Holyoke, Massachusetts, haven’t quite been able to do that.
A serious book. Empire Falls is less frothy than many of Russo’s works. There is certainly his trademark humor in describing the characters, but there’s a negative overlay to a lot of what happens. Many people in the town lead challenging lives. No one, except Francine Whiting, seems to be financially secure. The book ends with a mass shooting. At the end of the novel, we have no idea if Miles will reboot himself and be more focused on making a better future for himself and his loved ones.
I think that Empire Falls is Rockland, Maine. For many years, I joined my college friends, Jim and Stan, in early August to go to the Rockland Lobster Fest to eat crustaceans and run the 10K race. During the 1960s and 1970s, many local factories closed, and the town took a financial hit. The biggest employer in Rockland now is a credit card company call center, which was what was going to be built in a closed factory in Empire Falls after Mrs. Whiting sold the town to developers. It may not be a coincidence that author Richard Russo lives in Camden, Maine, a very upscale coastal town that is next to Rockland.
