Crossing to Safety

I’m not going to lie (I’m really bad at it) but I’ll have to admit I only heard about Wallace Stegner last year. At the time I’d read a very positive and passionate review and that was enough for me to know I had to read it. And the title, oh my goodness, isn’t it simply wonderful?

When I started the book a few days ago I basically knew nothing about it besides the fact that this was going to be a story about two couples who become friends. Today, I’m ready to rave about it to the whole world.

Wallace’s elegant, gentle and refined storytelling skills gave me shivers down my spine from the very first page (I promise you’re not going to find a single swear word in these pages).
This was (is!) a beautiful story and the characters jumped out from the pages. I feel like I know them better now than some people I’ve known all my life. Oh, my gosh, how I cared about these people. My hands were literally shaking all the time I held this book in my hands.

And if get started about Wallace’s prose, I’m afraid you all might think I’m just crazy and obviously exaggerating. Well, I’m not. Exaggerating, I mean, but I’m a bit crazy, yes. I underlined the whole book!

While telling this story Wallace gives a sense of space and time like no other author I’ve read before.
In my opinion, that was his main strength as a writer.

“Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature.”

As I mentioned above, this is basically a story about two couples and the way they interact with one another; and it’s told from the perspective of one of them at an older age. So yes, plenty of nostalgic and melancholic feelings in here. I believed their friendship from start to finish. I loved them all. All I wished for them was exactly what I wish for myself; that we all could get to a place and time in this crazy life where we’d finally feel like we were Crossing to Safety.

We will get there.

A Lost World

Once upon a time there was an American Republican President named Eisenhower. Ike wasn’t a very smart man but he was not an evil man. He didn’t like the way the world was run, not even in his own country. But he remained calm in his politics and civil to his political opponents. He set an example. People felt safe around other people.

At that time there was a place called Vermont. It contained a smaller place called the Northeast Kingdom. There were no motorways then and this place wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. So if you were there, you meant to be there. It had quiet roads for children to walk along, forested hills that the same children could get lost among, and general stores that these children could count on for shady coolness when they found their way home. These smelled of smoke and sweet tobacco.

It is of course the smells that are most memorable but the least describable. Outside the general store, the repair crew works reeking tar into the cracks of the roadbed. The scent of the maples is only noticeable as you enter the stand of spruce, and theirs, only while coming back into the maples. The lake water smells of the rotting leaves on the bottom. I’m sure it’s possible to smell the ozone on the mountains if the wind isn’t blowing. Smell is the quickest sense to accept its environment as normal but also the one that makes the most dramatic effect when re-encountered.

It was a good time even if not the best of times. There was this disease called polio. Anyone could catch it, almost anywhere. Many did; everyone knew someone who knew someone who had it. Polio didn’t kill everyone it found, but it did a heck of a job killing their nervous system. Remember President Roosevelt? A bit smarter than Eisenhower but he could only stand up straight with steel braces on his legs. He caught polio in Canada, just over the border. Summertime wasn’t all fun and games. Sometimes it was dangerous. But it was never unexpected.

Of course the good old days for us were the new unpredictable days of the mid-twentieth century for most of the country folk roundabout. We, especially we children, were a problem. We made senseless noise; we had no predictable routines; we did nothing productive; we had no skills useful in the countryside; and we spoke out of turn. We lacked any hint of Methodist discipline or deference. We were therefore dealt with most harshly by the natives - with a stern scowl. Nevertheless “There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Re-visiting that time and place is dangerous, not because it’s an idealised past which doesn’t measure up to scrutiny, but because it’s a forgotten past which suddenly re-emerges with the emotional force of death. This time is not 60 or 70 years ago; it is yesterday. And the chasm between yesterday and today is an entire life which has been expended. For good or ill, this life has dissipated and dispersed down that hole. The chasm demands to be filled with meaning. The content doesn’t matter that much. Tragedy, fulfilment, success, sacrifice, regret are really equivalent rubble. But only when the gap is filled can a crossing be made safely.

It is always surprising what the best fiction-writing raises from the psychic depths. Connections to others, and to oneself, abound in the most unlikely places during the most unlikely times.

Crossing to Safety is a quiet book, but a pleasure through and through to read. I think it is meant for mature readers.

In short, it is a book about lifelong friendship between two couples. Within its pages you live out the friendship from start through times, disability and a loss. Others have summarized it better than I might, so I will leave it at that.

Here are some quotes I liked:

"Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention ..."

"It is accepted that whatever the children learn, they learn from Aunt Emily. And any child who undergoes Aunt Emily's instruction is a post under a pile driver."

"When you're nailing a custard pie to the wall. and it starts to wilt, it doesn't do any good to hammer in more nails."

It is interesting to me when a writer talks about writing. Here is what Stegner muses: "Are writers reporters, prophets, crazies, entertainers, preachers, judges, what? Who appoints them as mouthpieces? If they appoint themselves, as they clearly do, how valid is the commission?" And then, 'The gift is its own justification, and there is no way of telling for sure, short of the appeal to posterity, whether it's really worth something or whether it's only the ephemeral expression of a fad or tendency, the articulation of a stereotype."

My answer is that whatever kind of writer Stegner sees in himself, this book is really worth reading.

A beautiful story about friendship, but so much more. It's about our commitment to ourselves versus our loyalty to those we love, those we choose to do life with. And it's about the compromises we make, and whether they are in fact compromises if we are doing it for someone we love as much, if not more, than ourselves. The writing is superb, and I thought Stegner did a great job at casually incorporating philosophical discussions into the characters' conversations without it becoming pedantic. My only criticism is the female characters are a bit flat, though we are told that they are more than that. I wish we could've seen that instead. It would've been quite a different book, though, if it had been from all 4 main characters' POVs, so I guess that's just one drawback of a limited 1st-person narration. Overall, would recommend especially to people who enjoy character-driven literary fiction novels.

Thanks to my friend Anne who has mentioned this book a few times on her podcast, n  What Should I Read Next?n

This was definitely one of the better books I have read this year. A slower paced book that I still felt deserved every one of the 5 stars I gave it. This story involved a very intimate and intense look at 4 friends and two marriages over the span of their adult lives. The writing was so descriptive and real...I will go as far as to say it was beautiful. The book is filled with many wonderful quotes. I became so involved in the course of the lives of Larry, Sally, Sid and Charity, that I felt as if I was saying goodbye to old friends when it was over. Charity is such a great literary character. Many people probably didn't like her, but I found her mesmerizing. She was such a bitch at times, and yet, unflinchingly generous and so full of life. She wanted the best out of life and when she could, she took it.....but she shared it with those she loved. She really lived and expected everyone around her to do the same. I didn't completely identify with these people or their priorities, and still found this book captivating....to me that says something about the powerful writing. This is the first book I have read by Wallace Stegner, but it won't be the last. If you are looking for something to sink your teeth into, I highly recommend!

"Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary."
This book about friendship and marriage is one of the wisest, quietest, most profound books ever. I first read it when it was published in 1987, when I was 34 years old, not long married and with an infant daughter. It was wonderful to read then, but how much more it resonates with me now, with a marriage that is still good, an adult daughter to be proud of, and, yes, friends that have been with us for all those years. Friends who have laughed and cried and shared successes and failures with us, who have needed and been needed in turn. It is just as impossible to imagine life without them as to think about the loss of my husband. Crossing to Safety uses two marriages, and four people to make you think about the concept of safety. Is the first one to die the safe one, leaving the others to cope with a missing limb; or the survivors, for now?
This quiet novel is about love and friendship, lives well-lived while coping with what fate hands us, and endurance. This is not true of all second readings of a beloved book, but life and experience and time made the second time around a more enriching read.

This was a compelling story of two couples who begin a lifelong friendship when they are both newly married. It is interesting to watch the growth and change in the friendships and the marriages over the next 40 years.

Stegner's writing style is wonderful, unhurried, and very descriptive. He made me like the people, the places where they lived, where they summered in a cabin by the lake, and the interactions between all four main characters. I felt like I was there with them! I will definitely be reading more of Stegner's books!

Character-driven novel about a long friendship between two couples, Sally and Larry Morgan and Charity and Sid Lang, who met at the University of Wisconsin during the Great Depression. Both Larry and Sid are writers and teachers. Sally and Larry are struggling newlyweds. Charity and Sid have inherited wealth and are striving for tenure. As the story opens, Larry and his wife are visiting Sid and Charity at their sprawling property in Vermont in 1972. Larry narrates the story of the friendship in an intimate manner, telling of their triumphs and setbacks.

In the beginning, the focus is on the developing friendship, and the tone one of is happiness and excitement about the future. The joie de vivre of youth is almost palpable. In this section, it is easy for the reader to become fond of these four people. Of course, the happy times cannot continue forever. Life happens, each couple experiences challenges and disappointments, and expectations are adjusted.

Stegner is a master at gradually revealing the relationship dynamics occurring behind the scenes. One of the four tends to try to control situations and people out of concern for their happiness. My favorite part is the idyllic summer the couples spend at Sid and Charity’s family retreat in Vermont. The author uses his power of description to vividly bring the region to life:

“I wonder if I have ever felt more alive, more competent in my mind and more at ease with myself and my world, than I feel for a few minutes on the shoulder of that known hill while I watch the sun climb powerfully and confidently and see below me the unchanged village, the lake like a pool of mercury, the varying greens of hayfields and meadows and sugarbush and black spruce woods, all of it lifting and warming as the stretched shadows shorten. There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

This book is filled with similar elegant writing. It is a story of life, love, friendship, and aging. It is sedate, reflective, nuanced, and a pleasure to read.