Richard Ford's Canada spends 20 years on ice

It began life in 1989 with 20 pages of notes which he stored in the freezer, adding to them over the years, until they were finally brought out of cold storage and turned into his seventh novel, Canada.

And if that seems odd, he explains that his mother grew up in Arkansas in the Great Depression in old, wooden houses where there was always the fear the house might burn down – so she put all her important valuables in the fridge to keep them safe from fire.

‘‘And that’s how I came upon that,’’ the 68-year-old Mississippi-born Ford told his audience at a Canberra Times/ANU literary event at the National Library today.

‘‘If you open my fridge you’ll see some dead pheasants, some dead ducks, and some manuscripts,’’ the game-shooting writer said to audience laughter.

Best known for his trilogy featuring Frank Bascombe, a novelist turned sportswriter turned real estate agent –  The Sportswriter, Independence Day (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award in 1996) and The Lay of the Land – Ford is on the final leg of his Australian tour before returning to the US.

His new novel, Canada, tells the story of  Dell Parsons, 15, whose first words look set to become classic opening lines: ‘‘First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed.

Then about the murders, which happened later.’’ Dell’s life in Montana falls apart when his parents rob a bank to pay off a bad debt, and he flees over the border to Canada.

Ford spoke of his sympathy for Dell’s parents and revealed that he himself had had a somewhat chequered youth, to the point that his youthful misdemeanours had landed him in jail.

For how long? ‘‘Not very long – as long as it took my mother to come and get me out.’’

And, as he heads back to the US, the good news for fans of his trilogy is that he is making notes on Frank Bascombe  – but rather than being left at home in the freezer, they’ve been travelling with him in Australia.