Authors starting with F from INternet Specialty Books

Like Jim Fergus's previous novel, ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN, this one looks back into the history of the American West to tell a story of tensions between Native Americans and whites. In THE WILD GIRL, an eighty-something photographer named Ned Giles recalls an episode from 1932 through the diaries he kept at the time. As a young man, Ned was part of an expedition to find and free a boy who was captured by the Apaches--using an Apache girl as ransom. Ned has photographed the girl, and her narrative combines with extracts from Ned's diaries to tell a story that resonates years later, and that lays bare some of the harsh truths about the American presence in the West.

INDEPENDENCE DAY is the sequel to Richard Ford's 1986 novel THE SPORTSWRITER. The story picks up six years later and finds the narrator, Frank Bascombe, still trying to make sense of life. Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter; he now sell real estate. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend he takes a stab at settling some aspects of his life. He attempts to finally sell a house to a couple which has already turned down the first 46 houses he has shown them. He goes on a trip with his 15-year-old son to visit the basketball and baseball halls of fame, but the magic of Cooperstown eludes them. INDEPENDENCE DAY was the first ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award.