‘Chances Are…’ a beguiling, surprising tale

In his ninth novel, “Chances Are…”, Richard Russo (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for “Empire Falls”) returns to many of the theme she has written about with such skill and grace: friendships and family ties, class differences and romantic relationships.

This time the story is built around the longtime friendship of three men, college pals in the late 1960s and early ’70s, who reunite 44 years after graduation on Martha’s Vineyard.

They gather at a house that Lincoln Moser, a commercial real estate broker in Nevada, inherited from his mother. Teddy Novak runs a small academic press in Syracuse, N.Y.; Mickey Girardi lives on Cape Cod and, age 66 be damned, still makes his living as a rock musician.

Lincoln is thinking of selling the house and wants to mark a long-ago weekend the trio spent there just after college graduation with another classmate, a young woman named Jacy Calloway. All three of the men were in love with her, but none of them had the nerve to say so. They shared a boozy, sweet few days that culminated with them singing under the stars.

The next morning, the men found a note from Jacy that could be summarized as, “I hate goodbyes, so goodbye.” They never saw her again, and neither did her family.

Lincoln invites Teddy and Mickey to the island for what he intends to be a nostalgic farewell to the house — but to the surprise of all three friends, the visit becomes an intense effort to determine what happened to Jacy.