Everybody's Fool

Everybody’s Fool is a 2016 novel by American writer and teacher Richard Russo. Set in the small, eccentric, and troubled town of North Bath, New York, it follows a group of characters whose dramas unfold over a single Memorial Day Weekend. In their forced closeness, these small-town characters challenge and confuse the boundaries between public and private life, as well as the normally distinct genres of romance, tragedy, comedy, crime, and existentialist. The narratives are quintessentially modern in their reluctance to accept any traditional genre as true, exploring instead how individual worlds arise out predisposition and experience. The novel is the sequel to Russo’s 1993 work, Nobody’s Fool.

At the novel’s opening, Douglas Raymer, the police chief of North Bath, goes to the funeral of a former judge, the honorable Flatt. He arrives late, having been tied up in a search effort for Mayor Moynihan’s mentally ill wife, Alice. The cemetery evokes a memory of attending the funeral of his wife, Becka. Becka died unexpectedly by falling down the stairs, just moments after she announced that she was leaving Raymer to live with someone whom she loved more. Throughout the novel, Raymer is preoccupied with a garage door opener she left behind, believing that if he traverses the entire town, it will eventually activate the garage door of her lover.

During the funeral, Donald Sullivan, who goes by “Sully,” is served in Hattie’s restaurant by its owner and his ex-lover, Ruth. In the years since their breakup, they have remained friends. Roy Purdy, a notorious abuser of women who was once married to Ruth’s daughter, barges in and starts an altercation with Ruth. After Sully leaves, a gas line explodes near the Old Mill Lofts and nearly kills Roy. In an aside, Sully’s friend Rub Squeers privately laments that Sully will soon die of a heart condition.



A clerk at the police station, Charice, informs Raymer that strange activity has been reported near the Old Mill. He travels to the building and then to his home at Morrison Arms apartments. There, he discovers that a horde of snakes belonging to a black market animal salesman has been loosed upon the building. Charice offers Raymer to stay at her house. He accepts, while hiding his emotional conflict between being angry at his dead wife and her lover, and attracted to Charice. Charice’s brother, a police liaison to the nearby Schuyler Springs named Jerome, alerts her that soon the two towns’ departments will be combined. As a result, many jobs will be cut and demotions made in the interest of efficiency.

That night, a thunderstorm passes over town. Janey and Roy have sex, and Ruth discovers the affair the next morning. She screams at Roy, who retaliates violently, striking her in the head repeatedly with a glass. Sully hits Roy over the head with a frying pan, saving Ruth. Roy makes a getaway before the police get to the scene. Ruth is rushed to the hospital, and luckily survives. The next day, Raymer catches the black market snake salesman. He is disillusioned because he feels he may never complete his most important mission, to find the man with whom his wife had an affair. He struggles to decide whether to act on his feelings for Charice, both because she is much younger, and because he has not reached a resolution with his failed marriage. Roy schemes to get back at Sully by setting his trailer on fire while he is away. At the same time, Sully looks for Roy while suffering worsening cardiac symptoms. He passes out and is picked up by an ambulance. Ruth’s husband, Zack, goes looking for Sully at his trailer to tell him about Ruth. Instead he finds Roy inside the trailer; realizing his motives, Zack sets fire to the trailer while Roy is still within, killing him. He does so out of a fear that Roy will kill someone in his own family. Raymer discovers that his wife was in love with Jerome, and that Charice had also known but kept silent in solidarity with her brother. Charice admits her love for Raymer. Raymer forgives Jerome, and starts a relationship with Charice. Sully makes it through a risky heart surgery and comes out on the other side miraculously healthy. Overwhelmed but satisfied with the outcomes of Memorial Day Weekend, the characters look forward to their futures together in North Bath.