BETWEEN THEM: REMEMBERING MY PARENTS Richard Ford Bloomsbury $18.99

Ford, an amusing and cynical observer of contemporary American life, wrote these two remembrances of his parents 30 years apart. His father, Parker Ford, was thoroughly unremarkable; a congenial salesman who sold laundry starch and met Ford’s mother, Edna, when she was just 17. He died when the author was young and, typically, a child didn’t give illness much thought. Ford’s relationship with his mother is more fulfilled because we see him as an adult, in relation to her, more clearly. He purges one regret by writing about it; a last moment of hesitation after inviting his ill mother to come and stay, then adding, “Well, wait though,” and watching her disappointment take hold. It’s beautifully written, as you would expect, but modest in its ambition and reach.