Trade Paperback

New York Times Bestseller

The haunting and elemental novel, hailed as "mesmerizing . . . a masterwork by one of our finest writers working at the top of his form,"* from the distinguished modern American master and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, now in paperback

"Richard Ford is doing his very best in his extraordinary new novel, Canada . . . and he's doing it with a level of linguistic master that is rivaled by few, if any, in American letters today. . . . Canada is blessed with two essential strengths in equal measure.—a mesmerizing story driven by authentic and fully realized characters, and a prose style so accomplished it is tempting to read each sentence two or three times before being pulled to the next. . . . Canada is a tale of what happens when we cross certain lines and can never go back.."—*Andre Dubus III, New York Times Book Review

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later.”

When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons’ parents rob a bank, his sense of a happy, knowable life is forever shattered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life across a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents’ arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Del is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American, whose suave reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents’ robbery and arrest, Del struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew and loved. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare elegant prose, resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.