In "The Lay of the Land," the lethargic third installment of Frank?s story (it follows "The Sportswriter," published in 1986, and the 1995 sequel "Independence Day"), Mr. Ford gives us three days in his hero?s life in New Jersey. It is Thanksgiving week in the year 2000, as the contested presidential election drags on, and the boom years of the 90?s are beginning to turn a corner. Frank has been treated for prostate cancer, his second wife has unexpectedly...

"From Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford: the final novel in the world of Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible characters in American literature. Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway....