{"product_id":"chances-are-isbn-9781101971994","title":"Chances Are . . .","description":"\u003cb\u003eA NATIONAL BESTSELLER from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eEmpire Falls\u003c\/i\u003e • Three men in their late sixties—old friends from college, each with a secret—come together on Martha’s Vineyard in this “gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” (\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A cascade of charm…. Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on display while the distant past confounds the present in a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, \u003ci\u003eChances Are . . .\u003c\/i\u003e introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLook for Richard Russo's new book, \u003ci\u003eSomebody's Fool\u003c\/i\u003e, coming soon.\u003c\/b\u003e“[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park . . . Along with his wry eye for irony and regret, [Russo] offers up a compelling mystery . . . When the denouement comes, it’s a stunner. Nevertheless, all bombshells feel earned. If you’re on a hammock in the Vineyard or under a tent in Acadia, or slumped over the fire escape of your hot city apartment, chances are your chances are awfully good that you’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A cascade of charm . . . Each [character is] so appealing that you hate to let him go, though you’ll quickly feel just as fond of the next one . . . One of the great pleasures of \u003ci\u003eChances Are... \u003c\/i\u003estems from how gracefully Russo moves the story along two time frames, creating that uncanny sense of memories that feel simultaneously near and remote . . . Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eChances Are...\u003c\/i\u003e is, at heart, less a mystery than an evocation of what happens when [its characters] discover that 'the membrane separating sympathy from pity could be paper thin' . . . . The cloud of remorse that hangs over [the novel] can be affecting precisely because these old friends have so much difficulty articulating their emotions. Will they be able to open up to whatever the future holds?\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Irresistible . . . with the complexities of human relationships, from first love to parenthood to aging [and] rich with humor.\" —\u003ci\u003eTampa Bay Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No one understands men better than Russo, and no one is more eloquent in explaining how they think, suffer, and love. At a rough time for masculinity, Russo’s flawed but always decent characters are repositories of the classic virtues of their gender. . . . [\u003ci\u003eChances Are...\u003c\/i\u003e] blends everything we love about this author with something new. Yes, this is a novel about male friendship, fathers and sons, small-town class issues, and lifelong crushes, and it provides the familiar pleasure of immersion in the author’s distinctive, richly observed world and his inimitable ironic voice. But this is also a mystery about a 1971 cold case.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus \u003c\/i\u003e(starred)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For his first stand-alone novel in 10 years, Russo has written a bewitching tale of male friendship with thriller elements . . . This is vintage Russo with a cunning twist.”\u003ci\u003e—Booklist \u003c\/i\u003e(starred)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A surprising work that is as much a mystery as a meditation on secrets and friendship . . . a moving portrait of aging men who discover the world's worst-kept secret:  You may not know the people you thought you were closest to.\"—\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Russo’s first standalone novel in a decade mixes his signature themes—father-and-son relationships, unrequited love, New England small-town living, and the hiccups of aging—with stealthy clue-dropping in a slow-to-build mystery . . . In the final stretch, surprising, long-kept secrets are revealed. This is vintage Russo.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003eRICHARD RUSSO is the author of nine novels, most recently \u003ci\u003eChances Are..., Everybody’s Fool\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThat Old Cape Magic;\u003c\/i\u003e two collections of stories; and the memoir \u003ci\u003eElsewhere.\u003c\/i\u003e In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for \u003ci\u003eEmpire Falls,\u003c\/i\u003e which, like \u003ci\u003eNobody’s Fool,\u003c\/i\u003e was adapted into a multiple-award-winning miniseries; in 2017, he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Port­land, Maine.\u003cb\u003eLincoln\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeptember was the best month on the island. The crowds were gone, the beaches empty, the ocean still warm. No need for restaurant reservations. After Labor Day, the politicians had all returned to D.C., the left-wing Hollywood\/media types to L.A. and New York. Also gone were the smug, privileged frat boys, many of whom imagined themselves Democrats but who in the fullness of time would become mainstream Republicans. Half of Lincoln’s Las Vegas agency—or what was left of it after the Great Recession—was made up of Sigma Chis who’d been long-haired pot smokers and war protesters in the sixties and seventies. Now they were hard-line conservatives, or anyway harder than Lincoln. These days, a lifelong Republican himself, Lincoln had a difficult time finding comfort anywhere on the political spectrum. Voting for Hillary was out of the question, but if not her, then who? A baker’s dozen of GOP candidates were still in the race—some legitimately stupid, others acting like it—at least through Iowa. So Kasich, maybe. Bland wouldn’t be so bad. Think Eisenhower.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Anyway, a relief to shelve politics for a few days. Lincoln had little doubt that Teddy, who would arrive tomorrow, was still a raging lib, though there was no way of telling whether he’d be in the Clinton or the Sanders camp. Mickey? Did he even vote? Probably not a bad idea to give Vietnam a conversational miss, as well. The war had been over for decades, except not really, not for men of their age. It had been their war, whether or not they’d served. Though his memory was increasingly porous these days, Lincoln still remem­bered that evening back in 1969 when all the hashers had gathered in the back room of the Theta house to watch the draft lottery on a tiny black-and-white TV someone had brought in for the occasion. Had they asked permission to watch on the big TV in the front room? Probably not. The social boundaries of sororities, like so much else in the culture, had started eroding, as evidenced by their regular Friday afternoon hasher parties, but they could still crop up unexpectedly. Hashers still entered the house through the rear. Anyway, the draft wasn’t about the Thetas, it was about Lincoln and Teddy and Mickey and the others. Eight young men whose fortunes that night hung in the balance. A couple were dating Thetas, as Lincoln would the following year with Anita, and planned to see them later in the evening, but they’d watch the lottery on the crappy little set in the back room, not the big color one in the front room, because they belonged there, as did the war itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They’d made a party of it, everybody chipping in for a case of beer—strictly against the rules, but Cook wouldn’t squeal, not that night. The rule was that you couldn’t start drinking until your birthday had been drawn and you knew your fate. Mickey’s came first, shockingly early. Number 9. How was it that Lincoln could recall this detail, when time had relegated so much else to memory’s dustbin? He remembered, too, how his friend had risen to his feet, his arms raised like a victorious boxer, as if he’d been hoping for precisely this eventuality. Going over to the aluminum tub, he’d pulled a beer out of the ice, popped the top and chugged half of it. Then, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he’d grinned and said, “You boys must be feeling pretty dry in the mouth right about now.” The other thing Lincoln recalled was glancing over at Teddy and seeing that all the blood had drained out of his face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Absent from these vivid memories, though, was how he’d com­ported himself. Had he joined the others in serenading Mickey with the Canadian national anthem? Had he laughed at the god-awful jokes (“Been nice knowin’ ya, Mick”)? He had a dim, perhaps false, memory of taking Mickey aside at some point and saying, “Hey, man, it’s a long way off.” Because even those who’d drawn low numbers probably wouldn’t hear from their draft boards for months, and college students were allowed to finish that academic year. Most juniors in good standing—as Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey were—would get one-year deferments to complete their degrees before reporting for duty. Maybe by then the war would be over or, failing that, winding down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Later that evening Lincoln called home, hoping his mother would answer, though naturally it was his father who picked up. “We watched,” he said, his nasal, high-pitched voice exaggerated by the tinny, long-distance connection. “Like I told your mother, they won’t go beyond one-fifty.” As with all his father’s opinions, this one was expressed as fact. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Unless you’re wrong and they do,” Lincoln said, emboldened, perhaps, by being three thousand miles away. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “But I’m not and they won’t,” Dub-Yay had assured him, prob­ably to allay Lincoln’s fear, though he sometimes wondered if his father’s pronouncements served some other, more obscure purpose. Ever since his mother let him in on the truth about their family finances, his father’s declarations had begun to tick him off. “How did the other Stooges make out?” Dub-Yay wanted to know. (Lin­coln had told his parents that he and Teddy and Mickey, so unlike the preppy Minerva boys with rich parents, had come to think of themselves as the Three Musketeers, to which his father had imme­diately responded, “Three Stooges would be more like it.”) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lincoln swallowed hard. “Mickey got nailed. Number nine.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “It’s a foolish war,” his father conceded. “But you don’t get to hold out for a just one.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lincoln supposed he agreed, but it still annoyed him that his father would be so cavalier where his friends were concerned. “What would you say if I went to Canada?” Lincoln ventured. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Not one blessed thing.” This statement was delivered without hesitation, as if Dub-Yay had been anticipating the question, given it some serious thought and was anxious, as always, to share his conclusions. “The moment you did that, you would no longer be my son, and we wouldn’t be speaking. I didn’t name you after Abraham Lincoln so you could become a draft dodger. How fared Brother Edward?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That was his nickname for Teddy, who’d visited them in Dun­bar that summer. Lincoln’s mother had liked him immediately, but Dub-Yay hadn’t been impressed. It was W. A. Moser’s deeply held conviction that a single round of golf would reveal everything you needed to know about a man’s character, and he had made up his mind about Teddy on the first tee when he failed to remove his wristwatch. Nothing pleased Wolfgang Amadeus more than to extrapolate the world from a grain of sand. In retrospect, though, Lincoln doubted the wristwatch incident had anything to do with his misgivings about his friend. More likely Teddy had said some­thing provocative about the war or remarked that all the members of the Dunbar Country Club were white and the staff Latino.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Teddy’s safe,” Lincoln said. “Three hundred–something.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Just as well. I can’t imagine what earthly use that boy would be in combat.” \u003ci\u003eOr anything else, \u003c\/i\u003ehe seemed to be saying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Had Lincoln even spoken to his mother that evening? Here again, memory, like a conscientious objector, refused to serve.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What \u003ci\u003ewas \u003c\/i\u003eetched vividly in Lincoln’s brain, however, was the moment when all three Musketeers emerged from the Theta house and found their beautiful d’Artagnan shivering in the December cold out back. Just as he remembered the shameful thought that had entered his head unbidden—\u003ci\u003eYou lucky dog!\u003c\/i\u003e—when she took a surprised Mickey in her arms and hugged him tight. You had only to glance at Teddy to know he was thinking the same thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Jacy. Vanished from this very island. Memorial Day weekend, 1971.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300263710949,"sku":"NP9781101971994","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781101971994.jpg?v=1767723548","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/chances-are-isbn-9781101971994","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}