"Changing Tides", Ford's fourth novel for adult readers, was released in August 2007. Exploring the themes of family and self-discovery, the novel centers around a marine biologist in Monterey whose quiet life is turned upside down by the arrival of his estranged teenage daughter and by his attraction to a graduate student in English who comes to California to research what might be an unpublished John Steinbeck novel about a Cannery Row worker coming to terms with his love for another man in 1940s America. The novel won Ford his second Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Men's Romance category.