The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

Overview

Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifing from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks outhis fortune--in the hotel business, on new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the threacherous back roads of the American Northwest. Bo chases after the promise of the American dream through Minnesota, the Dakotas, Saskatchewan, Montana, Utah and Nevada, but ultimately there is no escaping the devastating reach of the Depression and his own ruinous fate.

In this affecting narrative, a defining masterpiece by the "dean of Western writers" (The New York Times), Wallace Stegner portrays more than three decades in the life of the Mason family as they struggle to survivle during the lean years of the early twentieth century.

With an introduction by Robert Stone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525435235
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/28/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	126,622
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was the author of, among other novels, Remembering Laughter, 1937; The Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1943; Joe Hill, 1950; All the Little Live Things, 1967 (Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star, 1961; Angle of Repose, 1971 (Pulitzer Prize); The Spectator Bird, 1976 (National Book Award, 1977); Recapitulation, 1979; and Crossing to Safety, 1987. His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, 1954; Wolf Willow, 1963; The Sound of Mountain Water (essays), 1969; The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto, 1974; and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three of his short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements. His Collected Stories was published in 1990.

Date of Birth:

February 18, 1909

Date of Death:

April 13, 1993

Place of Birth:

Lake Mills, Iowa

Place of Death:

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Education:

B.A., University of Utah, 1930; attended University of California, 1932-33; Ph. D., State University of Iowa, 1935

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An irreplaceable classic . . . One of the great books from which we may understand America and its rise . . . It has not aged, and it seems unlikely that, as long as memory and history preserve the bringing forth of modern life on this continent, it will ever lose relevance."
-Robert Stone, from the Introduction

"Stegner has felt the spell of mountain and prairie, of drought, flood, and blizzard. . . . A harrowing saga."
-The New York Times

"Stands out beautifully and unforgettably."
-The New Yorker

Editorial Reviews

"Stegner has felt the spell of mountain and prairie, of drought, flood, and blizzard.... A harrowing saga." —The New York Times

"Stands out beautifully and unforgettably." —The New Yorker

"The most important book Wallace Stegner has done." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher