by Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize winner 1971
A man, Lyman Ward, is stuck in a wheelchair and moves to his Grandma’s cottage in the California mountains. He decides to write a book about her life. What an interesting life. She is part of “gentility” in northeastern part of America in late 1800’s but marries a mining engineer and moves out west. First, New Almaden in California, then Leadville, Co, then Mexico briefly (loved that part), then to a canyon in Boise, ID. The main characters, Susan and Oliver Ward, are written about by Lyman their grandson. He tries to figure out their lives – how their marriage stayed together despite (never know for sure) supposed unfaithfulness of Susan with Frank Sargent, who loved her at first sight and never got over her. They (Oliver and Susan) lose a daughter by drowning and Frank commits suicide. This is towards the end of the book. Lyman, the grandson, is living in their cottage in Grass Valley and going through Susan’s letters and historical papers trying to write a novel. He says they lived together 50 years after the death of their youngest child and they seemed content. But he, whose wife left him for a surgeon when he became an invalid, realizes his grandfather never forgave his grandmother – he let her live with him but never forgave her.
Last sentence, Lyman has awakened from a terrible dream and lies awake in the darkness listening to a diesel go up the mountain: “In this not-quite-quiet darkness, while the diesel breaks its heart more and more faintly on the mountain grade, I lie wondering if I am man enough to be a bigger man than my grandfather.”
Beautifully written. Loved the stories of Leadville and Mexico in particular.
Oliver Ward (his grandpa) was a tremendously kind, loving, patient, and generous man. He never got a break, though, and Susan was disappointed in him over and over and lost faith in him.
Lyman’s wife, Ellen, left him for the surgeon who removed Lyman’s leg. The surgeon up and left Ellen, it turns out, we learn from Lyman’s son, and Ellen now wants to come back to Lyman. Will he be bigger than his grandfather, and forgive her and take her back?
The books’ letters from Susan to her friend, Augusta, are part of the book and I guess were exact copies of letters from Mary Hallock Foote, a real person. He used her life as the basis of the novel but changed and added to it.
Angle of Repose – the angle at which dirt and pebbles stop rolling and are at rest. He felt his grandmother reached the angle of repose.