Which novel by Richard Ford won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996?

Richard Ford’s novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996. It follows Frank Bascombe, a divorced New Jersey real-estate agent, during an eventful Fourth of July weekend in which he tries to reconnect with his children and reassess his life.

The novel is the second book in Ford’s Bascombe series, following The Sportswriter and preceding The Lay of the Land. Its title refers both to the national holiday and to Frank’s personal effort to achieve a kind of emotional independence.

Ford’s win was notable because Independence Day became the first novel to receive both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The Sportswriter and The Lay of the Land are common mix-ups because they belong to the same series, while Canada is a later Ford novel published in 2012.

Ford, born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944, is known for psychologically detailed fiction about American identity, family, class, and middle age. Independence Day remains his best-known prizewinning work.