Independence Day (signed by Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize winner, the 2nd Frank Bascombe novel)

First Edition, First Printing (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1995). Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996 (the only book to win both awards). Signed by Ford on the title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket; presents as new. Octavo. 447 pp. A wonderful copy for the Ford fan and collector. In this sequel to Ford's classic, The Sportswriter, Frank Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter, yet he's still living in Haddam, New Jersey, where he now sells real estate. He's still divorced, though his ex-wife, to his dismay, has remarried and moved along with their children to Connecticut. But Frank is happy enough in his work and pursuing various civic and entrepreneurial sidelines. He has high hopes for this 4th of July weekend: a search for a house for deeply hapless clients relocating to Vermont; a rendezvous on the Jersey shore with his girlfriend; then up to Connecticut to pick up his larcenous and emotionally troubled teenage son and visit as many sports halls of fame as they can fit into two days. Frank's Independence Day, however, turns out not as he'd planned, and this decent, appealingly bewildered, profoundly observant man is wrenched, gradually and inevitably, out of his private refuge. Independence Day captures the mystery of life -- in all its conflicted glory -- with grand humor, intense compassion and transfixing power.