This is a novel with great width and breadth, a novel of a time in the early twentieth century, of people caught in the events of the time and the conflicts of dollars, liquor, the shrunken frontier and the complexities of a family.
It is a dysfunctional family with a wife that is perhaps the strongest of them all, caught up in kindness and understanding in the midst of violence, loss, and frustration. Two children, one of whom dies just as the future should be opening up to him, the other forced to survive and reflect, and a father who dreams big, has touches of generosity mixed with a brooding violence and a proclivity for seeking riches that causes the family to move continually. Bootlegging, gambling, fortune seeking are his passions as he looks for his “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” I guarantee that Bo Mason will be a name that sticks in your unconscious.
The book follows their twisted path and moves through the four lives with a vivid reality that is startling and fascinating. Some books you read and love the story, some you read and are fascinated, and some you read to learn. This book is supposed to be autobiographical for Wallace Stegner and if it is I feel for him and the childhood he never had, but this is a book I would read for the quality of writing, for the beauty of the word and the sentence. This is a book that makes you feel like you have read a true classic.
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