Wallace Stegner

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...

Joe Allston, the retired literary agent in 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 its serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga, and...

Bo Mason and his wife and two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair; drifting from town to town, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks his fortune. Stegner has created a masterful, harrowing saga of a family trying to survive during the lean years of the early 20th century.