Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award for Independence Day, Richard Ford is the author of one of the great American novels of the past two decades. He turns his attention to a different nation for his seventh novel, Canada (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99 cl., June), which tells the story of 15-year-old Del Parson, abandoned first by his bank-robbing parents and later by his runaway twin sister. Whisked away from Montana to a sleepy corner of Saskatchewan, Del is taken in by an enigmatic Canadian and develops a new sense of self as he comes to terms with his unfamiliar surroundings. Themes such as broken families and rootlessness follow from Ford’s other novels, but the focus on landscape and identity seemingly connects the book to the Canadian canon. The cross-border story promises to chart new territory for Ford, who has said he’s been drawn to Canada since he visited as a teenager.
