Showing results by author "Richard Ford" in Genre Fiction

Frank Bascombe has a younger girlfriend and a job as a sportswriter. To many men of his age, 38, this would be a cause for optimism, yet Frank feels the pull of his inner despair and especially of his recent losses - his preferred career has ended, his wife has divorced him, and a tragic accident took his elder son. In the course of this Easter weekend, Frank will lose all the remnants of his familiar life, though he will emerge heroic, with spirits soaring.

In 1956, Dell Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Dell and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him.

Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an 'Existence Period' - selling real estate in New Jersey and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life. Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of extraordinary perception.

Richard Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Frank Bascombe. Now 68, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam and has thrived - seemingly but not utterly - amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left countless lives unmoored, are the perfect backdrop for Ford - and Bascombe.

It is fall, 2000, and Frank Bascombe has arrived at a state of optimistic pragmatism that he calls the Permanent Period of life. Epic mistakes have already been made, dreams downsized, and Frank reflects that now at least there are fewer opportunities left in life to get things wrong. But the tranquillity he anticipated is not to be. In fact, as Thanksgiving dinner with his children and first wife nears, the Permanent Period proves as full of possibility as life had ever been.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sportswriter comes a deeply personal account of his parents - an intimate portrait of American mid-20th-century life and a celebration of family love. Richard Ford's parents volunteered little about their early lives - and he rarely asked. Later, he pieced their stories together from anecdote, history and the occasional photograph, frozen moments linking him to another time.

Mit siebzehn Jahren verliebt sich Edna Akin aus Arkansas, in Parker Ford, einen Jungen vom Land mit den durchscheinend hellblauen Fordaugen. Sie heiraten und beginnen ein Nomadenleben in den Südstaaten Amerikas - Parker arbeitet als Handlungsreisender. Die 30er-Jahre ziehen vorbei wie ein langes Wochenende, gemeinsam legen sie ungezählte Meilen zurück, trinken Cocktails und bewohnen ein Hotelzimmer nach dem anderen: New Orleans, Texarkana, Memphis.

Illegaler Handel,ein Banküberfall, drei Morde und ein Junge in de Welt der Erwachsenen, in der es keine Unschuldigen gibt....

Great Falls, Montana, 1960. Dell Parsons a 15 ans lorsque ses parents braquent une banque, avec le fol espoir de rembourser un créancier menaçant. Le hold-up échoue, les parents sont arrêtés, et Dell a désormais le choix entre la fuite et l'orphelinat.

Die Menschen, von denen Richard Ford in Irische Passagiere erzählt, haben oft knapp die falsche Abzweigung im Leben genommen, oder einfach Pech. Es geht so schnell - ein dummer Seitensprung, eine verpasste Chance, eine plötzliche Krankheit, ein Wirbelsturm und schon ist man unterwegs zur eigenen Scheidung, muss sich ganz neu orientieren, ist plötzlich der Junge, der seinen Vater verloren hat und zum Außenseiter wird. Aber so klar Ford seine Figuren in ihren Schwächen zeigt, so beiläufig lässt er sie in Würde durch ihre Anfechtungen und Prüfungen gehen.