Richard Russo’s new novel “Under the Falls” returns to the community of his youth

Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose books have also been adapted for screen and television, has released his new novel “Under the Falls,” a story he describes as a continued return to the community of his youth. In an interview for PBS NewsHour’s arts and culture series CANVAS, senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown visited Russo to discuss the book’s themes and why he continues to write about places that time has changed.

Russo is the author of 10 novels and has earned the Pulitzer Prize, according to PBS NewsHour. The new book adds to a long career that also includes collaborations on screen adaptations and television series drawn from his work, reflecting how his fiction has moved beyond the page and into broader entertainment formats.

In “Under the Falls,” Russo explores the emotional and practical reality of being left behind by a place, a job, a way of life, or a civic identity. PBS NewsHour’s coverage frames the novel around the communities that endure even as their residents confront the loss of certainty, status, and familiar social patterns.

The interview positions Russo’s focus not only on individual characters but on the social geography of memory. By writing again about the kinds of towns and neighborhoods that shaped him, Russo draws attention to how local histories can linger, even when the buildings, institutions, or routines that once defined a community have faded.

Brown’s conversation with Russo also highlights the author’s method and his interest in sustained observation over a career. Rather than presenting a single snapshot of change, PBS NewsHour’s description emphasizes Russo’s ongoing effort to revisit similar ground, using new characters and situations to show how a community’s past can keep resurfacing in the present.

The CANVAS segment situates the novel within Russo’s wider body of work, including his reputation as a writer whose storytelling has proven adaptable for television and screen. That cross-media track record, PBS NewsHour notes, has brought his fiction to audiences beyond traditional print readers.

With “Under the Falls,” Russo extends that long-running engagement with community life, centering on what remains when people can no longer return to what once felt stable. The PBS NewsHour interview does not provide additional plot specifics in its preview, but it presents the book as another chapter in Russo’s exploration of the human consequences of change.

For readers approaching the novel, PBS NewsHour’s interview suggests a book driven by character, place, and the long afterlife of formative environments, with Russo returning to the settings of his own past while pressing the story toward the question of what gets left behind as time moves on.