Christmas brings Frank Bascombe to the Default Period of his life. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived seemingly but not utterly, amid the devastations of Hurricane Sandy, which has left countless lives unmoored, and is remarkably the perfect occasion for Ford and Bascombe to relay four Christmas stories. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, Ford ranges over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle, the tumult of the world we live in.
