Wallace Stegner

"Called a "magnificently crafted story...brimming with wisdom" by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the...

Joe Allston, the retired literary agent of Stegner's National Book Award-winning novel, The Spectator Bird, returns in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga,...

"Sabrina Castro, an attractive woman with a strong New England heritage, is married to a wealthy, older California physician who no longer fulfills her dreams. An almost accidental misstep leads her down the slow descent of moral disintegration, until there is no place for her to go but up and out."--Back cover.

Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City, not for his aunt's funeral, but to encounter after forty-five years the place he fled in bitterness. A successful statesman and diplomat, Mason had buried his awkward and lonely childhood and sealed himself off from the thrills and torments of adolescence to become a figure who commanded international respect. But the realities of the present recede in the face of the ghosts of his past. As he makes the perfunctory...

Twenty-nine-year-old Margaret Stuart is happy to have her sister Elspeth come to live with her and her husband Alec on their prosperous Iowa farm, but when the friendship between Elspeth and Alec ripens into passion, it changes the course of the rest of all their lives.

Collects brief fictional works and legends by the nineteenth-century New England literary master.

"This unique collection of previously uncollected work addresses every aspect of fiction writing, from the writer's vision to his or her audience; from the use of symbolism to swear words; from the mystery of the creative process to the recognizable truth it seeks finally to reveal. Stegner explores the process of composition as it relates to the writer's evolving character, what demands he makes on himself both as a member of the species and as a...