After the disintegration of his family, the ruin of his career and an affair with a much younger woman, Frank Bascombe decides that the surest route to a 'normal' American life is to become an estate agent in Haddam, New Jersey. Frank blunders through the suburban citadels of the Eastern Seaboard and avoids engaging in life until the sudden, cataclysmic events of a Fourth-of-July weekend with is son jolt him back. The sequel to The Sportswriter and the only novel ever to win the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year, Independence Day is a landmark in American Literature.