I just finished a terrific novel, Empire Falls, that my friends Ray and June had given me in Sarasota. The author is Richard Russo, who also wrote Nobody's Fool (I saw the excellent movie with Paul Newman.) It's a Pulitzer-Prize winner and a national bestseller, published in 2001. They recommended it highly as a novel about small town life but said it takes a while to get into it. I read about 200 pages and wasn't a bit interested in it. I told them I couldn't understand why they'd recommended it. And then it started to get fantastic. I just finished it and can't get over how the author could have thought through such a plot. It's full of secrets and layers upon layers upon layers. I recommend it highly if you want a good read that does, however, take some slogging through at the beginning.