The Lay of the Land (73 page)

ALSO BY RICHARD FORD

A Multitude of Sins

Women with Men

Independence Day

Wildlife

Rock Springs

The Sportswriter

The Ultimate Good Luck

A Piece of My Heart

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF AND ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright © 2006 by Richard Ford

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com
www.randomhouse.ca

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

Portions of this novel previously appeared in slightly different form in
The New Yorker.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Swallow Press/Ohio University Press: Excerpt from “To What Strangers, What Welcome” by J. V. Cunningham, from
The Poems of J. V. Cunningham.
Copyright © 1997 by J. V. Cunningham. Reprinted by permission of Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio (
www.ohioswallow.com
).

Doubleday: Excerpt from “The Waking” from
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.
Copyright © 1953 by Theodore Roethke. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ford, Richard, date.

The lay of the land / by Richard Ford. —1st ed.

p. cm

1. Real estate agents—Fiction. 2. New Jersey—Fiction. 3. Middle-aged men—Fiction. 4. Divorced men—Fiction. I. Title.

PS
3556.0713
L
39 2006

813'.54—dc22 2006025570

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ford, Richard, date.

The lay of the land / Richard Ford.

I. Title

PS
3556.0713
L
39                  2006                           813'.54                           c2006-902587-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

eISBN: 978-0-307-26712-2

v3.0