Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegman

If Henry Adams whom you knew slightly, could make a theory of history by applying the second law of thermodynamics to human affairs, I ought to be entitled to base one on the angle of repose, and may yet. There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you--a train, say, or the future--has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing.

Wallace Stegner describes the West and its people better than anyone. This Pulitzer prize-winning book is a masterpiece of great prose, detailing lives in last half of the 19th century. The book tells the story of older man uncovering information about his grandmother and writing about it. The west was a tough place for most people and Stegner is not one to romanticize the west. He places the reader in the middle of the hard lives of folks trying to build a better life based on hopes that often shattered.

With beautiful writing and an appreciation of the land, Stegner reveals the west of the average person. In this case, we see the story of a fascinating pioneer woman. She is conflicted over her love of culture, her marriage, and the course of her life. Like all great books, this is one that you will savor for a long time.