Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Richard Ford’s best-known novel opens with a man introducing himself: “My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter.” Ford, born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944, published that book in 1986, ten years after his first novel. He went on to follow Bascombe for almost four decades, through five books that move from Easter in 1980s New Jersey to a road trip to Mount Rushmore in 2020. The second, Independence Day (1995), was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. In between he wrote short stories set in Montana, a memoir of his parents and Canada (2012). This guide covers his 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1976–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Richard Ford has published 14 books of his own: novels, story collections and a memoir. The core is the five Frank Bascombe books, read in this order: The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995, Pulitzer Prize), The Lay of the Land (2006), Let Me Be Frank With You (2014) and Be Mine (2023). Start with The Sportswriter. Outside the series, Canada (2012) and the stories of Rock Springs (1987) are his best-known books.
Where to Start with Richard Ford
If you want the Frank Bascombe novels from the beginning
→ The Sportswriter (1986) — the 1986 novel that introduces him.
If you want his prize-winning novel
→ Independence Day (1995) — read The Sportswriter first.
If you want a standalone novel
→ Canada (2012) — a boy, a bank robbery and the border.
If you want short stories
→ Rock Springs (1987) — drifters and families in the American West.
14 Richard Ford Books, in Order
A Piece of My Heart
Ford’s first novel. Robard Hewes leaves his wife in California and drives to Helena, Arkansas, to resume an affair with a married woman; he ends up on an island in the Mississippi River with Sam Newel, a troubled young man who overthinks everything.
The Ultimate Good Luck
Harry Quinn, 31, a former Marine helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam, goes to Oaxaca to help free the brother of his former girlfriend, Rae, a young American held in a Mexican prison for drug smuggling. He hopes the rescue will win Rae back.
The Sportswriter
Frank Bascombe, 38, a failed novelist turned sportswriter, spends Easter weekend in Haddam, a fictional New Jersey suburb. His son Ralph died of Reye’s syndrome at nine, his marriage to the woman he calls “X” is over, and he is trying not to think too hard about either. A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Time later named it one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.
Rock Springs
Stories set mostly in Montana and the northern West, many of them about drifters, broken families and men who have made bad choices. The title story ends in a motel car park near Rock Springs, Wyoming, and in “Great Falls” a boy watches his parents’ marriage end. Two of the stories were adapted as the 1990 film Bright Angel, which Ford co-wrote.
Wildlife
Great Falls, Montana, in 1960. Sixteen-year-old Joe Brinson watches his parents’ marriage fail after his father, Jerry, leaves to fight a forest fire and his mother, Jeanette, begins an affair with a wealthy older man, Warren Miller. Paul Dano adapted it as his first film as director in 2018, with Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Independence Day
Frank Bascombe, now an estate agent in Haddam, spends the Fourth of July weekend of 1988 on a road trip with his troubled teenage son Paul, ending at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. His ex-wife has remarried and his new relationship is uncertain. It was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award, in 1996.
Women with Men
Three long stories: “The Womanizer” and “Occidentals”, both about American men in Paris, and “Jealous”, in which a seventeen-year-old boy in Montana sets out by train to see his mother in Seattle.
A Multitude of Sins
Stories about adultery and its aftermath, mostly among comfortable, middle-aged Americans: affairs that are ending, marriages that survive them, and people who discover how little they knew each other. A negative review in The New York Times by Colson Whitehead led to a well-publicised incident two years later (see the FAQ).
The Lay of the Land
Thanksgiving week in 2000, with the presidential election still undecided. Frank, 55, sells houses on the Jersey Shore, is being treated for prostate cancer, and has been left by his second wife, whose first husband has turned up alive.
Canada
Dell Parsons, looking back as an old man, tells how at fifteen his parents robbed a bank and were arrested, his twin sister ran away, and he was taken across the border to Saskatchewan to live with Arthur Remlinger, a man with a hidden violent past. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Prix Femina étranger in 2013.
Let Me Be Frank With You
Four linked novellas narrated by Frank, now 68, retired and remarried, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012: “I’m Here”, “Everything Could Be Worse”, “The New Normal” and “Deaths of Others”. It was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Between Them
Two portraits of his parents. His father, Parker, was a travelling salesman for a laundry-starch company who covered seven Southern states and died of a heart attack in 1960, when Ford was sixteen; his mother, Edna, died in 1981. The piece about her was written soon after her death, the one about his father more than fifty years after his.
Sorry for Your Trouble
Nine stories, many of them about death, grief and late middle age, with characters who look back on lost marriages and old affairs. Frank Bascombe does not appear.
Be Mine
February 2020. Frank, 74, has moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where his son Paul, 47, is being treated for ALS at the Mayo Clinic. He rents an RV and takes Paul on a Valentine’s Day road trip to Mount Rushmore. Reviews were warm but mixed, with Dwight Garner in The New York Times calling it the thinnest of the five.
In What Order to Read Richard Ford
The five Frank Bascombe books should be read in order, because Frank ages in real time and each book builds on the losses of the last: The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006), Let Me Be Frank With You (2014) and Be Mine (2023). Each is set over a holiday or a few days, so the gaps between them are years in Frank’s life. Canada is not part of the series.
Everything else stands alone. The Montana books, Rock Springs, Wildlife and Canada, make a natural group: all three are told by someone looking back at the year their family broke. The two early novels are mainly for readers who want to see where he started.
A reading path
1. The Sportswriter (1986)
2. Rock Springs (1987)
3. Independence Day (1995)
4. Canada (2012)
5. Be Mine (2023)
Everything Else Richard Ford Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Anthologies and edited books
5
5 books · 1990–2007
- 1990The Best American Short Stories 1990guest editor
- 1992The Granta Book of the American Short Storyeditor
- 1998The Granta Book of the American Long Storyeditor
- 2004Vintage Forda sampler of his stories and novel excerpts
- 2007The New Granta Book of the American Short Storyeditor
The years · 1944–2023
Quick facts about Richard Ford
- Known for
- Frank Bascombe, the New Jersey sportswriter turned estate agent he followed through five books from 1986 to 2023, one of which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize.
- 1944
- Born in Jackson, Mississippi
- 1976
- First novel, A Piece of My Heart
- 1986
- The Sportswriter
- 1996
- Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day
- 2012
- Canada
- 2023
- Be Mine, the fifth Bascombe book
- Born
- 16 February 1944, Jackson, Mississippi; his father was a travelling starch salesman
- Education
- Michigan State University; MFA, University of California, Irvine (1970)
- Married
- Kristina Hensley, in 1968
- Prizes
- Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award (1996); Princess of Asturias Award (2016)
- Taught
- Princeton, Williams, Trinity College Dublin, University of Mississippi, Columbia
- Series
- Five Frank Bascombe books, 1986–2023
The red mark is 1986: The Sportswriter, the first Frank Bascombe novel.
How Richard Ford Writes: One Voice, Over Decades
The Bascombe books are written in the first person, in Frank’s voice, and almost nothing happens in them by the standards of plot: a holiday weekend, a drive, a few houses shown to clients. What fills them is Frank’s running commentary on suburbs, real estate, marriage and his own evasions. Each book has its theory of how to live: the “Existence Period” of Independence Day becomes the “Permanent Period” of The Lay of the Land.
Ford lets time pass in real life between the books, so Frank is 38 in the first and 74 in the last, and each novel carries the losses of the ones before: a dead son, two ended marriages, cancer, a son with ALS.
The Montana books work differently. Rock Springs, Wildlife and Canada are written in plain sentences by narrators, often boys, looking back years later at the moment their parents failed them. Critics compared Canada with Wildlife and with William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow.
Frequently asked questions about Richard Ford’s books
How many books has Richard Ford written?
Fourteen books of his own, all listed on this page: nine novels or novel-length books (counting Let Me Be Frank With You), four story collections and one memoir, from A Piece of My Heart (1976) to Be Mine (2023). He has also edited several anthologies and published Vintage Ford (2004), a sampler.
What are Richard Ford’s books in order?
A Piece of My Heart (1976), The Ultimate Good Luck (1981), The Sportswriter (1986), Rock Springs (1987), Wildlife (1990), Independence Day (1995), Women with Men (1997), A Multitude of Sins (2002), The Lay of the Land (2006), Canada (2012), Let Me Be Frank With You (2014), Between Them (2017), Sorry for Your Trouble (2020) and Be Mine (2023).
What is the order of the Frank Bascombe books?
The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006), Let Me Be Frank With You (2014) and Be Mine (2023). The first three are sometimes called the Bascombe trilogy. Read them in order: Frank ages from 38 to 74 across the series.
Where should I start with Richard Ford?
The Sportswriter (1986), the first Bascombe novel. If you would rather start with something shorter and self-contained, try Wildlife (1990) or the stories in Rock Springs (1987).
What is Richard Ford’s most famous book?
Independence Day (1995), the second Bascombe novel, which in 1996 became the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Sportswriter and Canada are almost as well known.
Do you need to read The Sportswriter before Independence Day?
It helps. Independence Day can be read alone, but it assumes you know about the death of Frank’s son Ralph, his divorce and his life in Haddam, all of which The Sportswriter sets up.
Have Richard Ford’s books been filmed?
Two. Bright Angel (1990), directed by Michael Fields, combines two stories from Rock Springs; Ford co-wrote the screenplay. Wildlife (2018), Paul Dano’s first film as director, with Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. HBO announced a miniseries of The Sportswriter in 2007 but dropped it.
Why did Richard Ford spit on Colson Whitehead?
In 2002 Colson Whitehead reviewed A Multitude of Sins unfavourably in The New York Times. When the two met at a party in 2004, Ford spat on him. In a 2017 Esquire essay Ford said he did not feel any different about Whitehead, the review or his response. Years earlier, after Alice Hoffman reviewed The Sportswriter negatively, he had sent her a copy of one of her own books with bullet holes in it. The episodes were raised again when The Paris Review announced him as winner of its 2020 Hadada Prize in 2019.
Is Richard Ford still alive?
Yes. He was born on 16 February 1944 in Jackson, Mississippi. His most recent book is Be Mine (2023).
Is Canada part of the Frank Bascombe series?
No. Canada (2012) is a standalone novel narrated by Dell Parsons, whose parents rob a bank when he is fifteen. It shares its Great Falls, Montana, setting with Wildlife and some of the Rock Springs stories.
Footnotes
- Richard Ford — Wikipedia
- Canada (novel) — Wikipedia
- Be Mine (novel) — Wikipedia
- Zoning Out and In — London Review of Books, 2006
- Between Them — BookPage
- Richard Ford wins 2020 Hadada Prize amid controversy — Mount Holyoke News, 2019
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter.”
— Richard Ford, The Sportswriter (1986), the first line
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