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As I read this, I thought, "this is about a 4 star read." So why did I give it 5 stars? It is such a beautiful book, that's why. There were many parts that didn't seem to move along, which is why I thought I would be stingy, but I'm so very glad the author took his time. And I felt myself talking to the characters, mostly Susan. "Don't be so removed from your life - how many do you get?" Could I be so involved with a story and not give it 5 stars?
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"What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them."
Me too.
Our narrator and assembler of letters and facts is Lyman, grandson of Susan and Oliver Ward. He's piecing together their story (mainly Susan's) - a wide-ranging Western tale set in the late 1800s and full of love, writing and drawing, and sense of place (each new section starts when the Wards move to ...more
Me too.
Our narrator and assembler of letters and facts is Lyman, grandson of Susan and Oliver Ward. He's piecing together their story (mainly Susan's) - a wide-ranging Western tale set in the late 1800s and full of love, writing and drawing, and sense of place (each new section starts when the Wards move to ...more
I was thrilled when my book club picked this book. I first read this book years ago and loved it then. Reading it again now, after being married for over ten years, I have a very different perspective on the book. The book traces the story of the protagonist's grandparents as they move through the American West living in mining towns and dreaming of irrigation plans. But the story isn't just historical; Lyman Ward, the narrator who is researching the lives of his grandparents and telling their s
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This is the second of Stegner's novels that I have read (the other was Crossing to Safety). I have also read two of his nonfiction books, Wolf Willow and Beyond the Hundredth Meridian John Wesley Powell the Second Opening of the West. This does an interesting job of combining his two strengths. It is the story of a disabled historian researching his grandparents' lives. His grandmother's story is based on the real story of Mary Hallock Foote. He uses her letters. Stegner does a marvelous job of
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I put off reading this book for a long time, simply because the synopsis on the back of the book made it seem so unappealing: A disabled retired historian researches his grandparent's life in the west. It makes me wonder, had Stegner had never won a Pulitzer for this novel, if anyone would pick it up at all. It would be better for publishers to emphasize the historian's grandparents, whose relationship together in the Western U.S. in the 1880's and on is the focus of the majority of the book. St
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Nov 30, 2008
Krista
marked it as to-read
Apr 10, 2009
Sam
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Jun 05, 2009
Cindy AL
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Mar 04, 2010
Celeste
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May 12, 2011
Dave
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Apr 16, 2012
Sally
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Nov 09, 2012
Dana Arbelaez
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Oct 07, 2014
Jen
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Mar 01, 2015
Krista
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Feb 27, 2016
Maia
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May 23, 2016
Amy
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Jan 17, 2018
Joy
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Jan 25, 2020
Linda
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Jan 18, 2021
Jane
marked it as to-read
