Richard Ford insists he never set out to write a sequel—let alone a trilogy.

Still, here he is, about to publish book three on the life of Frank Bascombe, the New Jersey writer-turned-realtor at the center of two novels—TheSportswriter(1986) and the Pulitzer Prize—winning Independence Day (1995) —that established him as a major American author.

The Lay of the Land, which Knof will publish in October, finds Frank still showing houses, but, at age 55, grappling with a whole new set of middle age problems, including prostate cancer. The man who was staggering from grief over his dead son when readers met him 20 years ago is now contemplating his own mortality.

The book's well-known protagonist (and the fact that Ford hasn't published a novel in more than a decade) makes it a bona fide literary event. But Ford says he did not aspire to write sequential novels. He just kept getting drawn in by Frank's voice.

"When I started working on the book that would become Independence Day, I wanted to write a book about a man who took his son to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I wanted it to be set on the coast and only after a lot of thinking and taking notes did I realize that all my notes were in Frank's voice," he says. "I tried to resist it, and then I said, 'well, don't be an idiot, this is something you're given.' "

We are sipping wine on an August afternoon in the lobsterman's equipment shed where Ford now writes. The shed—which sits on the edge of the waterfront property in East Boothbay, Maine, he bought seven years ago—has a window that looks out onto Linekin Bay. But Ford's desk faces a wall that is covered with a map of New Jersey, the setting for all of the Frank Bascombe books.

Ford found Frank's voice a third time in 2002, when he began writing The Lay of the Land, which is set during Thanksgiving week against the backdrop of the disputed 2000 presidential election. "I think it's a voice that allows me as a writer to be serious and funny, and that combination of the two faces of drama, one laughing and one crying, allows me to take up serious subjects," he says.

The writer's own voice still reveals his Southern roots (he is a Mississippi native and has lived in New Orleans) and his speech loops from plainspoken to professorial. He calls comparing Frank Bascombe to John Updike's Harry Angstrom (which more than one reviewer has done) "a dumbbell thing to do," explaining that because he writes in first person and Updike uses third person, "that makes the two gestures entirely dissimilar." A self-professed "lunch bucket kind of guy," he describes the theme of his new book as, "How do we accept ourselves, and how do we come to the end of our lives and find a vocabulary for affirmation?"

That mix of rugged and cerebral has helped create an image that is more than the sum of Ford's literary accomplishments. Tall, handsome and outdoorsy, he's a wordsmith who likes to hunt birds and cover miles on his Harley, a guy men envy and women desire.

At 62, Ford has more gray in his hair than brown, but is still easily recognizable from his photo on The Sportswriter. On the day I visit, his hair is long in back and his stubble is edging up to beard. Lately, he's had no time for chores like shaving and getting a haircut. He's been too busy going over the pages of his new book, revising again and again. He's just sent in the latest round of proofs to his publisher and is taking a one-day break—and he's charming enough to just about convince me that he considers spending hours answering a journalist's questions a break—before plunging back in for yet another pass through the pages.

"He's always been intense," says Gary Fisketjon, who has been Ford's editor since he published The Sportswriter. "I have the sense that this one, possibly because it's a book with so much in it—and for him almost good might as well be awful—I think he just wanted to take special care."

Ford says he wants to get it right, because he's never going to write about Frank again.

A Marriage Thing

We're on our second glass of wine and we've moved to the deck outside the main house, where the view of the bay is even better. Three spirited Brittany spaniel bird-hunting dogs (one a puppy) and a cat play in the yard.

Ford has lived in more states than many people have visited (a fact he considers uninteresting: "I can't think of anything more boring than one's peregrinations on the landscape"). He ended up in Maine because he'd decided he wanted to live on the water and couldn't find a place to buy on the Jersey shore. He also owns homes in Riverdale, near New York City, and in New Orleans. Yet his life in Maine has the look of something settled. He knows his neighbors well enough that when one of them was having a problem with a porcupine eating his tree, Ford obliged by shooting the critter with a .22-caliber hunting rifle (he immediately regretted it and has found more peaceful means of protecting his own trees).

His wife, Kristina, moved up two years ago after ending a high-powered career in city planning in New Orleans. She now heads the local planning board. Even though careers have kept them in separate cities often during their 38-year marriage (the couple have no children), Ford says his wife is deeply involved in his work. He reads each draft aloud to her, and, at his invitation, she comments on everything from word choice to time structure.

He acknowledges it's not always easy to take criticism.

"Out of frustration, I will say, 'Oh, screw it, I worked this out, I don't know what else to do,' " he admits. "I'm sorry to say I'm a little bit of a hothead, and I will flash angry at something, but I'm clearly not angry at her. I'm almost invariably angry at myself for not having done something well enough."

He adds, "There are times when she will say, 'Look, you asked my opinion. If you don't like my opinion, okay.' It's kind of a marriage thing."

Later, when the three of us are having dinner at a restaurant, Kristina uses the phrase "we've been working on this book." When I ask how her husband deals with criticism, she tells me, "It's the last thing he wants to hear sometimes—but he wants to hear it."

The End for Frank

While he hasn't produced a novel since 1995, Ford did publish two highly praised story collections in that time, Women with Men (1997) and Multitude of Sins (2002). To date, he has published three volumes of short stories and five novels. But nothing has resonated with readers like his Frank Bascombe books. The Sportswriter, his third novel, was his breakthrough; Independence Day was the first book ever to win the Pulitzer and the Pen/Faulkner Award.

Add The Lay of the Land, and "I'm not sure we've had a more significant contribution to American literature in our time," says Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss., and former president of the ABA, Howorth is admittedly no disinterested observer—he and Ford have been friends since the 1980s. But Howorth has lots of writer friends, and he hasn't said that about anyone else's work. "I'm a little hesitant to lavish so much praise on one writer," he says. "But I don't think it's something that another writer would necessarily disagree with, because what other writer would put that much of one's work on one character and extend a literary work that far?"

Given all that, how can Ford be so sure this is the end for Frank? In a word—age. Ford says he can't imagine anything interesting to say about a Frank who's in his 60s. And, Ford says, the rigors of writing The Lay of the Land has made him aware of his own age. "I'm not forecasting my own demise," he says. "I just think that to embark on another four-year-long project at age 64 doesn't seem like anything I would do. I don't want to die falling forward at my desk."