Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner

I may have read this long ago and was reminded last year of it when one of my book clubs suggested it.  Every page can be savored.  Stegner's descriptions put you in the place and time, experiencing the moment along with the character.  The story of a historian named Lyman Ward, crippled, in a wheelchair, in constant pain, using the letters of his grandmother to tell the story of settlers in the American West. 

Stegner used the real letters of Mary Hallock Foote to weave Lyman's struggle to understand his shattered life with the experience of his grandparents who moved out West to pursue his grandfather's dream of civilizing it.  I loved how the arc of their relationship rose and fell with their disappointments ad struggles, adventures and achievements.  His grandmother, Susan Ward, continues to commit over and over to her marriage, partly as the convention of the times and by choice, giving up the life she knew for the life he promised but never delivered. 

Published: 1971  Read: February 2019   Genre: fiction, classic