Russo Recommends

by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 9/13/2004

A debut novel bearing a strong endorsement from Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Richard Russo, who once taught its author, Stephanie Doyon, received a six-figure preempt from Simon & Schuster's David Rosenthal and Denise Roy. Rosenthal had edited some of Russo's early novels and was therefore receptive when the author called and urged him to buy Doyon's The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole, which he described as "winning and hilarious." Agent Simon Lipskar at Writers House also had connections with the author, who had worked in the accounting department at the agency after studying with Russo, and later went off to write children's books. When she completed her first adult novel, she asked Lipskar to take a look and he was, he said, knocked out by it: "It's funny as hell, moving, compassionate, wonderfully told." In view of Rosenthal and Roy's enthusiasm, it wasn't a hard sell, and the agency's Maja Nikolic, handling foreign rights, has already received a strong preempt from Germany's Ullstein and expects the Russo endorsement to mean big interest at Frankfurt.