Stegner used the real letters of Mary Hallock Foote as the basis of the life of Susan Ward, and he quotes them within the novel itself. Ward, confined to a wheelchair, is a middle-aged historian who is writing the biography of his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, an artist/writer who went west as a bride in the 1870s. The book is a first-person narrative by the main character, Lyman Ward. Then, I started building up credits and saw it whilst browsing and sprang for it, and loved it! I do tend to gush a lot about good books when I've just finished them, so ask me in six months what I think.but today, I consider this among the best books I've ever read. For some reason, I always put off reading Stegner and this novel, though I'm not sure why-it had the aura of being a "difficult" book and I was never in the mood. For years now, Wallace Stegner has been recommended to me and in particular his Pulitizer-Prize winning novel from 1972, Angle of Repose.
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