“This book is an attempt to write a biography that is the history not of a personality but of a career.” I am not from the West and have spent almost no time there, except through books and movies and one trip to California, where I flew over most of it. I also wasn’t sure about Wallace Stegner as an historian, as he’s primarily a novelist, who once wrote in the voice of an historian. Regardless, we learn very early on that he’s been enlisted into […]

“Floating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface. My eyes open. I awake.” Wallace Stegner lived until his mid-80s and published some autobiographical writing before he died. I have to imagine it’s great because a) I have never read anything from him that wasn’t great and b) this novel proves how strong his writing was at least until his late 70s. This novel is primarily narrated by Larry Morgan, an oft-published novelist […]

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Crossing to Safety” was a somewhat of a struggle for me. I wasn’t very motivated to pick it up in between readings. However, once I started reading, I was invested in the story. The story is told in a broken timeline. We start in the present (1970s) with Sally and Larry Morgan arriving at their long-time friends’ summer home/compound. We get hints that their friend, Charity, isn’t doing well and they are coming […]