What used to be aggressively spartan is shabby now. Nothing has been refreshed or added since Charity and Sid turned the compound over to the children. I should feel as if I were waking up in some Ma-and-Pa motel in hard-times country, but I don’t. I have spent too many good days and nights in this cottage to be depressed by it. JENNIFER BYRNE: I'm getting a sense of your taste, Chars, because it's Charlotte who's brought us our classic this evening. It's the 15th and final novel of Wallace Stegner - a deceptively simple story of the lifelong friendship between two couples, with the beautiful title Crossing To Safety. Crossing to Safety is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by "The Dean of Western Writers", [1] Wallace Stegner. It gained broad literary acclaim and commercial popularity. JENNIFER BYRNE: It's worth mentioning he was 78. This was Wallace Stegner's last book. So it's like a bulletin at the end of a long life. Geoffrey, how did you respond to it?

GEOFFREY COUSINS: She's really the fulcrum of the book, isn't she, Charity? She's the dominating personality, domineering in some respect, but still wonderfully, when you think of what she actually does for people. You know, the generosity of spirit she shows, as controlling as she is, is fantastic. She basically builds the lives of the other couple. Cataract sufferers must see like this when the bandages are removed after the operation: every detail as sharp as if seen for the first time, yet familiar too, known from before the time of blindness, the remembered and the seen coalescing as in a stereoscope. JASON STEGER: It's beautifully done. You know how you read fiction, and you sort of get empathy from fiction, I think. But with this one, I felt envy. I felt envy for these characters. They go through some, sort of, tough times, but it's how they deal with it that is so marvellous. Find sources: "Crossing to Safety"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)There is even, as my eyes make better use of the dusk and I lift my head off the pillow to look around, something marvelously reassuring about the room, a warmth even in the gloom. Associations, probably, but also color. The unfinished pine of the walls and ceilings has mellowed, over the years, to a rich honey color, as if stained by the warmth of the people who built it into a shelter for their friends. I take it as an omen; and though I remind myself why we are here, I can’t shake the sense of loved familiarity into which I just awoke. Stegner's powerful but unassuming narrative traces the bond that develops between the Langs and the Morgans from their first meeting in 1937 through their eventual separation on the occasion of Charity's death from cancer.

Showcasing a talent often as breathtaking as the landscape that was Stegner's lifelong muse, this first posthumous essay collection by the novelist, historian and biographer who died in 1993 confirms Continue reading »CHARLOTTE WOOD: A beautiful line where he says, 'Everything they had was ours before we had a chance to envy it or ask for it.' So Sid and Charity just give they have to their friends. Larry's other line towards the end of the book where he says, 'Charity was capable of a noble generosity, and ramming it down on the head of the recipient like a crown of thorns.' Stegner has said about his life - "I've made a kind of American hegira from essential poverty through the academic world, from real ignorance (my parents never finished the sixth grade) to living in a world where my natural companions are people of real brilliance. As Americans, it seems to me, we are expected to make the whole pilgrimage of civilization in a single lifetime. That's a hell of a thing to ask of anybody. It seems to me an extra hardship. It may also be an extra challenge, and it may be good for us." This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. MAN: (Reads) 'When the Langs opened their hearts to us, we crept gratefully in. We felt their friendship as freezing travellers feel a dry room and a fire, and we were never the same thereafter. We thought better of ourselves, thought better of the world. If we could've foreseen the future during those good days, we might not have the nerve to venture into it. Good fortune and happiness have never been able to deceive me for long.'

Fiction Book Review: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner". PublishersWeekly.com. 1987-08-04. CHARLOTTE WOOD: I think there's another interesting thing about this. If she was two generations later, she could have her own ambition as a woman. But at this time, the only place for her ambition is Sid. It is obviously very early. The light is no more than dusk that leaks past the edges of the blinds. But I see, or remember, or both, the uncurtained windows, the bare rafters, the board walls with nothing on them except a calendar that I think was here the last time we were, eight years ago. Sally is still sleeping. I slide out of bed and go barefooted across the cold wooden floor. The calendar, as I pass it, insists that it is not the one I remember. It says, accurately, that it is 1972, and that the month is August. Stegner's love of unspoilt nature and of the American West shines forth in these 17 graceful essays. This book by the Pulitzer Prize and NBA winner is a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee for Continue reading »The American West is ``less a place than a process,'' asserts Stegner. In these 17 graceful essays, most previously published in magazines or books, the novelist explores the dynamic tension between Continue reading »

GEOFFREY COUSINS: They do. I agree, it's a moral tale, and a wonderfully told one. I can't say enough about it. I cried in this book, and I don't often do that, and if I do, I don't normally admit it.Boswell, Evelyn (2006-10-05). "New Stegner professor to hit the ground running". Montana State University.