De-industrialization in the northeast spawned a service sector that didn’t quite match the employment opportunities of the old, manufacturing-based economy.  The resulting lower wages, limited job benefits, and reduced job security propelled many workers, their families, and communities into a downward spiral.

Two great regional story tellers—Russell Banks and Richard Russo—ploughed this field, with great personal insight. Both endured difficult childhoods, marked by absent or unreliable blue-collar fathers who left single moms in charge. In their short fiction and novels, both Banks and Russo chronicled the tragedies and tribulations of white-working class people living in hometowns like their own.

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