Richard Ford, a novelist and short story writer, is best known for a trilogy of prize-winning books featuring Frank Bascombe, a middle-aged Everyman from suburban New Jersey. Independence Day, the second Bascombe novel, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen Faulkner Award. Canada, a more recent bestseller that inhabits the consciousness of a fragile teenager after his family implodes, is another quiet masterpiece from one of America’s most acclaimed writers.