Angle of Repose

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972, this book is considered by some to be Stegner’s masterpiece. It’s a great read that is largely based on the true story of a woman pioneer in the west when so many other books about this era tell the stories of men. Layered on the frontier story is th......more

Fellow Goodreaders know that feeling of exhilaration when a new entrant pushes its way onto a top-ten-of-all-time list. Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize winner from 1972 is my most recent example. Of course, Goodreads reviewers also know the pressure involved in justifying the choice. So what makes......more

I read this book based largely on the Goodreads reviews. Maybe I'm not as smart as other reviewers, or maybe other reviewers give it high praise because it was a Pulitzer Prize winner and they didn't want to look dumb (something to which I have no aversion), or maybe this was just a fluke, but I did......more

This book started out great, but quickly got repetitive for me. Learning on Wikipedia that Stegner derived (with permission!) large parts of it from real letters published the next year certainly took winds out of my sails. Several critics have mentioned that Stegner's version of Mary Hallock Foote......more