The pressure to perform has been greater on 57-year-old Richard Russo since he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2002 for "Empire Falls."

At that time Russo had already written the first 100 pages of his new novel, "The Bridge of Sighs." "I wasn't going to change those pages because of the Pulitzer," he said by phone from his home in coastal Maine, "but if you're fortunate enough to win one, you don't want the next book to be a piece of crap!"

Nevertheless, he said that writing it has been a struggle. "This book resisted me. I didn't know how to tell this story."

He started with several different story lines about individual characters, but they weren't working on parallel tracks. "I was staring a novel in the face but couldn't see it."

Better trained than many novelists, Russo holds a doctorate in American Literature from the University of Arizona. So he knows literature, and he especially appreciates Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. "I learned my broad canvases and minor characters from Dickens, and I learned from Twain that if you use irreverence and smart understanding, you can make dark stories work with a touch of humor. 'Huckleberry Finn,' for instance, is a study of American racism, yet the reader is laughing all the way through the book."

Russo also has also been influenced by Sherwood Anderson, who wrote a classic about small town America, "Winesburg, Ohio."

"We get a steady diet of celebrity today," Russo said. "('The Bridge of Sighs') stands in stark contrast to the culture in which we live — and that is by design. One of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me was from Paul Newman, a friend since we worked together on 'Empire Falls.' He read the book in galleys, and he called me and said, 'You treat these ordinary people like kings and presidents."'

"Bridge of Sighs" is symbolically named for a 16th-century Venice white-limestone bridge, with windows that have stone bars. It connects the old prisons to interrogation rooms in the Doge's palace. The view from that bridge was the last one convicts saw before their imprisonment. Allegedly, the prisoners sighed as they took a last look at beautiful Venice before going to their cells.

The novel is set in upstate Thomaston, N.Y. Optimistic Lou C. Lynch, who is made fun of by childhood friends with the nickname "Lucy," is the main character, who still suffers from "spells" triggered by a frightening childhood incident.