Richard Russo’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the fictional Maine town of Empire Falls is Empire Falls.
Published in 2001, the novel centers on Miles Roby, manager of the Empire Grill, as he faces financial pressure, family tensions, and the decline of the town’s traditional industries. The story examines class, inheritance, resentment, and the long effects of economic change in a small community.
Empire Falls is fictional, but Russo gives the town a detailed social structure, with powerful families, struggling workers, schools, restaurants, and local institutions shaping the plot. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002.
Russo’s earlier novel Nobody’s Fool is also a small-town story and was adapted into a film starring Paul Newman. It is not the Pulitzer-winning book, which is why the two titles are sometimes linked in readers’ memories.