Richard Ford 
Lay of the Land 

With The Sportswriter, in 1985, Richard Ford began a cycle of novels that ten years later after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award was hailed by The Times of London as an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself.Frank Bascombes story resumes, in the fall of 2000, with the presidential election still hanging in the balance and Thanksgiving looming before him with all the perils of a post-nuclear family get-together. Hes now plying his trade as a realtor on the Jersey shore and contending with health, marital and familial issues that have his full attention: all the ways that life seems like life at age fifty-five strewn around me like poppies.Richard Fords first novel in over a decade: the funniest, most engaging (and explosive) book hes written, and a major literary event.From the Hardcover edition.