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May 13, 2015lukasevansherman rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
"What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? Our hottest arguments were always about how we could contribute. We did not care about the rewards. We were young and earnest." Wallace Stegner was equally admired for his fiction and for his non-fiction, which focused on the American West and conservation. "Crossing to Safety" is one of his best loved novels, written shortly before his death in 1993. It's the story of two academic couples and can stand as one of the great campus/teaching novels, along with "Lucky Jim," Williams's "Stoner," and Russo's "Straight Man." There are echoes of Updike's and Cheever's restless middle class characters but Stegner is a more generous, less anxious writer than either of them. The title comes from a Frost poem. Also see "Angle of Repose" and "Big Rock Candy Mountain." Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams and afterwards by T.H. Watkins, who was a friend of Stegner's.