Richard Ford is one of the most admired and significant writers of his generation, a consummate stylist and storyteller whose seductive voice and deep-rooted sense of place make his fiction urgent and impossible to put down.

In his moving, smart, and funny new novel, The Lay of the Land, Ford brings back his offbeat central character, Frank Bascombe, first encountered in his 1986 novel, The Sportswriter. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day, Frank reappeared, grieving the loss of his son and coping with divorce. Now, a decade later, he comes before us, still besieged (he has prostate cancer, his second wife has just left him, the 2000 election fiasco is in play), still trying to make sense of things.