Independence Day, Richard Ford general fiction Kaufman enters the lives and

Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling

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It captures the particular strangeness of life lived when the fear of death cannot be denied

Pulitzer Prize—winning author

stared at me as if I had just landed from outer space

Independence Day, Richard Ford general fiction Kaufman enters the lives andAfter the disintegration of his family, the ruin of his career and an affair with a much younger woman, Frank Bascombe decides that the surest route to a normal American life is to become an estate agent in Haddam, New Jersey. Frank blunders through the suburban citadels of the Eastern Seaboard and avoids engaging in life until the sudden, cataclysmic events of a Fourth of July weekend with his son jolt him back.