Canada - Richard Ford

A series of bad decisions can ruin not only your life but the lives of people around you. Dell Parsons, the narrator in this very sad story, learns this first hand. He traces the first bad decision back to his mother deciding to marry his father, then building in a series until the ultimate bad decision that his father and mother make to rob a bank. He's taken to Canada to live with the brother of his mother's friend, a man that has made a series of bad choices that has left him hiding in a small town in Saskatchewan. Ford writes with the same level of mastery in Independence Day, and though Dell is no Frank Bascome, he's a man coping to his circumstances, most of which are beyond his control.