As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people — men, mostly — who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford's moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring.
With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the beauty and strangeness of our most neglected landscapes, Richard Ford creates a novel whose portrait of heroic decency is guaranteed to linger with us long after we have turned its last page.
