Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.This is pretty much a faultless novel in its characterisation, plotting, and narrative tension.
Richard Ford captures us from the first moment that his hero, Dell Parsons, begins to tell us about the bank robbery that sees his parents imprisoned. Dell himself is sent to live with a friend of his mother's, who passes him on to her brother across the border in Canada, a man with disturbing and violent political views. For all this sense of constant threat, though, Ford never tips over into sentimentality: Dell's luckless, amiable father and his frustrated, yet loyal, outsider of a mother are loving but deluded, their decision to steal is the catalyst that almost destroys their son's life. Dell's twin sister, Berner, simply flees, perhaps as much from her sibling as from the arrest, as their fractured family disintegrates.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments