Richard Ford

Richard Ford is, without question, a Great American Novelist. He achieved literary fame in 1986 with his third novel, The Sportswriter, the first in his Frank Bascombe suburban trilogy, which perfectly nails ‘the normal applauseless life of us all’. Its sequel, Independence Day, was the first novel in American history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year.

Insightful and empathic, witty and graceful, Ford has proved himself both a master stylist and a master storyteller. Born and bred in Deep South Mississippi, now resident in east coast Maine, he is well placed to chronicle the American experience – and now, in Canada, he extends his reach across the border, delving into the world of Americans in exile. Best known for rendering ordinary lives in extraordinary prose, in Canada, Ford swerves into new territory.

After his parents rob a bank, Dell Parsons escapes across the Montana border, towards a hotel in a deserted town – and Canada itself, where he’s not the only one whose past lies on the other side of a border. This visionary novel questions the fine line between the normal and the extraordinary, and the moments that haunt our settled view of the world.