Wallace Stegner was an American author considered to be the “Dean of Western Writers”. He wrote numerous books throughout his career including The Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose, and the National Book Award winning The Spectator Bird.
Stegner was born in Iowa, but grew up across the United States and Canada. In his life, he lived in twenty different places including eight different US states. Stegner would go on to attend the University of Utah where he graduated in 1930 before heading to the University of Iowa where he earned his Master’s degree and a doctorate. He would also go on to teach at the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, and Stanford University. At Stanford, he founded the creative writing program and had many famous students during his time.
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If You Like Wallace Stegner Books, You’ll Love…
Angle of Repose is a story about a man named Lyman Ward who is confined to a wheelchair with a crippling bone disease. Ward has lost connection with his son in the counterculture of the 1970s. He decides to start writing the the biography of his grandmother. She was an artist and pioneer who made the journey with her husband across the hardscrabble West. As he works to discover his grandmother’s story, he also starts to examine his own as he probes the shadows of his own existence.
Stegner is also the author of Crossing to Safety. The book is considered one of the great American novels. It tells the story of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, two wives married to two professors during the great depression. The story traces their lives, loves, and aspirations. The story of fairly privileged people in academia shows just how difficult life can be, with equal highs and lows.
