a book
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner · 1992 · 672 pages
An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner—a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past.
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependant on others for his every need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.
recommended by 5 people
sourced from public statements
Jamie Lee Curtis
“I once attended a lecture series called ‘How the West Was Written’ that included discussion of works by Willa Cather, Raymond Chandler, John Fante, and Stegner. Stegner’s Pulitzer-winning 1971 novel is presented as the attempt of a wheelchair-bound historian to capture the lives of his settler grandparents. It’s all here: the bravery and adventure of those who explored the West; the sacrifice and the love. Amazing!”↗
Joanne Freeman
“@ErikLoomis I love that book.”↗
