The Big Rock Candy Mountain Book

Reading Wallace Stegner is like having a really great first boyfriend. He ruins you for anyone who comes later. Sometimes he's so good that you don't even want anyone after him.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain is the book that should have won Stegner the Pulitzer Prize long before he wrote Angle of Repose. I've read commentary indicating that Big Rock Candy Mountain is largely autobiographical. If that is true, my heart aches for the little boy that was Wallace Stegner. Perhaps those early painful experiences were what made him the soulful and understanding author we love.

Stegner is the conductor for the music of my heart. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to write reviews that adequately convey what he does for me.