A review by ceeceerose
The Risk Pool by Richard Russo

5.0

A fabulously written story of a young boy who watches the downfall of his mother and the recklessness of his father as he grows up in a small upstate New York town. As a child, Sam Hall admired his father and saw him as a strong, tough man who is afraid of nothing and no one. But after his parents split up and his mother’s mental health spirals out of control, he lives alone with his dad and finds out what kind of man he really is. Russo usually writes about middle-aged men who are at crossroads in their lives but this novel focuses mostly on a young boy’s formative years.