01682cam a2200265 4500 1261856028 TxAuBib 070709s2007||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2007027970 9780375414954 0375414959 (OCoLC)1519 DLC DLC BTCTA YDXCP BAKER EPL C#P NSB TxAuBib Russo, Richard, 1949- Bridge of sighs / Richard Russo. 1st ed. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 527 p. ; 25 cm. Louis Charles (""Lucy"") Lynch has spent all his sixty years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be--chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an ""empire"" of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation. Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself far from anything they'd known in childhood. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the ""history"" he's writing of his hometown and family. City and town life Fiction. Friendship Fiction. Lifestyles Fiction. New York (State) Fiction. Italy Fiction.