On Wallace Stegner's Big Rock Candy Mountain
The NY Times has a story today commemorating the centennial of Wallace Stegner's birth. For most people, Wallace Stegner is probably the least famous award-winning author they've never heard of. Though he won the the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, his books are not easy to obtain and most students today have never heard of him or been assigned any of his books to read in class. When I was a teenager, my father handed me Stegner's novel, Big Rock Candy Mountain. It had been one of my father's favorite books, and upon first read, it became one of mine. It's loosely based on Stegner's life, in that the significant events of the book also happened to Stegner's family. Like the fictional Bruce Mason, Wallace Stegner was left to care for his dying mother alone after his father ran away from the situation. Like Bruce Mason, Stegner had a father who killed himself after murdering a girlfriend. Like Bruce Mason, Stegner was the only survivo...