Overview

As author of the Wilderness Letter and major award-winning novels, histories, essays, and biographies, Wallace Stegner worked throughout his life to protect western lands, places, and peoples. His writing was and remains an inspiration and guide for countless people attempting to cultivate a sense of place in the American West while tacking their way through uncertain times. This book tells the story of Stegner and his family as they made a home just outside of Palo Alto, California, during its transition from the Valley of Heart's Delight (known for its rolling hills and orchards) to Silicon Valley. In this thoughtful study of the novels Stegner wrote in California—including his Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose—readers are invited to consider with Stegner what the practice of place requires in the American West. Specialists in the literature and history of the American West will find new analyses of Stegner and his influential work. Other readers will be guided through Stegner's work in concrete and accessible prose, and anyone who has longed for home and a sense of place will encounter a powerful, beautiful, and at times tragic attempt to build and preserve it.

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9781647690557

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Reviews

"Part field guide to Wallace Stegner's California novels, part hymn to Stegner's ideas of community and place, Matthew Stewart's graceful book asks what role the 20th-century California suburbs played in the author's famed geography of hope."" - Tara Penry, past president, Western Literature Association ""Provocative, extraordinarily well researched, and especially thoughtful. Matthew Stewart’s study is a work of intellectual history, or if one wishes, a history of ideas. Through close, revealing readings of Stegner’s novels and stories about California, Stewart provides a path-breaking examination of Stegner’s thoughts, especially as they are related to such ideas as community, home, place, character, and sociocultural change."" - Richard W. Etulain, University of New Mexico ""Matthew Stewart is a historian who takes Stegner’s fiction seriously as a guide to his thought about historical and social questions. His book offers an important and valuable reexamination of this multifaceted figure in the West."" - William Handley, University of Southern California"

Part field guide to Wallace Stegner's California novels, part hymn to Stegner's ideas of community and place, Matthew Stewart's graceful book asks what role the 20th-century California suburbs played in the author's famed geography of hope. - Tara Penry, past president, Western Literature Association Provocative, extraordinarily well researched, and especially thoughtful. Matthew Stewart's study is a work of intellectual history, or if one wishes, a history of ideas. Through close, revealing readings of Stegner's novels and stories about California, Stewart provides a path-breaking examination of Stegner's thoughts, especially as they are related to such ideas as community, home, place, character, and sociocultural change. - Richard W. Etulain, University of New Mexico Matthew Stewart is a historian who takes Stegner's fiction seriously as a guide to his thought about historical and social questions. His book offers an important and valuable reexamination of this multifaceted figure in the West. - William Handley, University of Southern California

Author Information

Matthew D. Stewart teaches humanities at The Ambrose School in Meridian, Idaho, and is associate editor at Front Porch Republic. He holds a PhD in history from Syracuse University.

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