When this book commences in 1904, the naïve farm girl Elsa makes her way to the town of Hardanger. Her mother has recently passed away, and her father has already remarried a young woman of her own age. She arrives at her uncle's place in Hardanger, filled with hopes of a better life. There, she meets and marries Bo Mason, thereby determining the course of her life.

Although the story begins with Elsa, it truly centers around Bo. Bo is a restless and ambitious individual. Too proud to work for others and too impatient to maintain a steady job for an extended period, he drags Elsa, and later their two sons Chet and Bruce, across the American and Canadian West in search of his big break. A hotel venture fails. A restaurant in another town doesn't yield significant profits quickly enough. Unreliable weather ruins a farm in Saskatchewan. During Prohibition, Bo finally decides on bootlegging and bases the family in Salt Lake City. However, due to the illegal nature of Bo's livelihood, the family cannot lead a normal life. They relocate every few months and are unable to form close friendships with neighbors. Elsa, Chet, and Bruce are ashamed of how Bo earns a living and the kind of people he associates with.

Bo can also be described as what we would today call a bit of a sociopath. He has very little empathy for others, not even for his wife and sons. He is proud, touchy, quick to anger, impatient with weakness, and fails to understand why his family is ashamed of him when he is finally providing well for them.

As Prohibition comes to an end, Bo once again flounders in search of a foolproof business opportunity. Meanwhile, tragedy befalls his unhappy family.

Bo is a quintessentially American character, specifically a character of the American West. He embodies the tragic underside of the sense of freedom and opportunity that lures men westward, and the price that is often paid by their women and children.

I found this book captivating, yet ultimately dissatisfying. I felt that Elsa, Chet, and Bruce did not assert themselves effectively. The only character in the book who truly has agency is Bo, and he meets a tragic end. I suppose I was hoping to witness his reform or repentance.

This book is a modern American classic.

I had only ever read one Wallace Stegner book before Crossing to Safety and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, this book was written much earlier in his career, so I worried it would feel dated.

But I need not have worried. This book could have been written last year. It is fresh with prose so beautiful that it is a book to be savored and certainly not rushed.

It covers the life of a family in the early decades of the 20th century, when there were still a few frontiers to explore. A man with a hunger to make his mark and his fortune means his family moving from one project to the next, both mentally and geographically.

It's a time of the last gold rush, the time of prohibition and bootlegging. Can a family survive his constant ambition? Can his marriage survive his reluctance to put down roots?

This book explores the dynamic of this family and the consequences of one man's thirst for the good life. It is highly recommended for those who enjoy beautiful prose and a deep exploration of family and human nature.

I would rate this book 4 - 5 stars mainly because of just the very last page.

This book presents a truly sad and depressing account of a family's experiences before, during, and after the bootlegging era. It is so heart-wrenching that I almost gave up reading it several times.

The writing style is excellent, very similar to that of a Steinbeck novel. The last third of the book is set in Salt Lake City, which was interesting for me as that's where I grew up.

Would I recommend this book? Well, not really. However, the last page made the entire reading experience worthwhile for me. It was like a glimmer of hope or a moment of revelation that redeemed the otherwise heavy and somber story.

Despite the overall sadness, the author's ability to vividly描绘 the characters and their struggles is remarkable. It makes you think about the hardships and sacrifices that families had to endure during those difficult times.

So, while I may not wholeheartedly recommend this book, I do appreciate the powerful impact that the last page had on me.

This book truly moved me to tears. Maybe it's because I'm in my seventies and have lived through and witnessed a great deal of what Wallace Stegner writes about. Or perhaps it's because I've come to understand just how complex human beings are and how easily they can cause injury and hardship to those they love.

The novel commences in 1905 in Minnesota and concludes in Utah in the 1930s. Its central figure is Harry “Bo” Mason, a physically robust and aggressive individual who left his parents' home at the age of fourteen, endured working hard-labor odd jobs, is self-reliant, fiercely stubborn, and given to “chasing dreams of acquiring quick wealth,” with unrealistic ambitions. According to his son Bruce, he is “a self-centered and dominating egotist who demands submission from his family yet is completely reliant on his wife.” He is aware of the great harm he inflicts on his family and experiences much remorse, but he fails to change.

Early in the story, Bo's decision to become a bootlegger is contested by his wife Elsa. “For a moment he stood, almost hating her, hating the way she and the kids depended on him and held him back, burdened him with responsibilities and then handicapped him when he attempted to do anything.”

“I made up my mind that I was your wife and I’d stay your wife, no matter what,” Elsa replies. “I never asked for more than we had. I’d have been content with just a meager living, if we could only keep what we’ve had up here. So don’t ever say you did this for me or them.”

Elsa is not weak; rather, she is soft in that she is unselfish, accepting, and loving. Later in the novel, she advises Bruce. “Some day you’ll learn that you can’t have people precisely the way you want them and that a little understanding is all you need to make most people seem halfway decent.” In many respects, Bo is a sympathetic character. I desired for him to succeed in each of his risky undertakings. Nevertheless, it is Elsa whom I cherished and respected.

Central to the story is how Chet and Bruce, the two sons, influenced by the characteristics and actions of their parents, develop.

I was captivated by what Stegner does with the theme of risk-taking and reward, an issue that every person faces as an adult. How much is a person willing to risk to achieve an ambitious goal? How much less is that person willing to accept? What makes a person happy? Stegner also explores the significance of heredity: how much a person is shaped by past generations. Reflecting on his parents and then himself, Bruce decides: “Perhaps it takes several generations to make a man, … several combinations and re-creations of his mother’s gentleness and resilience, his father’s enormous energy and appetite for the new, a subtle blend of masculine and feminine, selfish and selfless, stubborn and yielding, before a proper man can be formed.”

“The Big Rock Candy Mountain” is a remarkable book.

This is a truly strange book.

On one hand, it is simultaneously depressing, irritating, and yet utterly engrossing. I didn't really like it initially, but I just couldn't stop reading it. The writing is extremely good, yet I found myself disgusted by the plot. As I've said before, it's strange.

The book is basically the story of a family that, due to the father's vagabonding and grass-is-greener nature, endures a constantly upended home life over the course of about three decades. This description makes it sound less depressing than it actually is. In reality, the book chronicles one misfortune after another, like a witness to the perpetual hobbling of a family just when you think they're finally getting on their feet. As I said, it's depressing and irritating too, with what seems like a fairly formulaic structure after a few hundred pages (Hope, hope, hope... CRASH unceremoniously back to earth).

That being said, it was still a quite compelling read. Stegner has a way of bringing the epic out of the mundane, although he did it better in "Angle of Repose". At the same time, the epic sense kind of annoyed me after a while. Either the average joes lived much more epic lives in the beginning of the 20th century, or Stegner is overly melodramatic.

Either way, I'm pretty sure that most people don't convey four or five emotions with a single glance. Or if they do, the recipient of that look is not usually as aware of the conveyed emotions as they are in the pages of a Stegner novel (not sure exactly how much is autobiographical and how much is fiction).

The most impressive part of the book is the language that Stegner uses throughout. He displays an incredibly intimate knowledge of so many different towns, states, and regions in the West. He uses words that I didn't know existed as casually as in an everyday conversation. For example, he writes, "They came over a steep hump that had her warm and breathless, her legs tired, and before them lay a level trail cut through the aspen. Through the thin trees on the lower edge of the trail she could look over a long oceanic roll of ridges and peaks, a forested valley stretching southward, the blue glimmer of water. Clouds like cottonwool coasted over the peaks on the Alta side, snagged on spines of rock, blew eastward in frayed strings." Now, I don't know if Stegner made up those place names or really knew about the surrounding geography of the Cottonwood canyons east of Salt Lake City. But both options are completely plausible, and the impressive thing is that he makes you believe he knows it that well, regardless. And he does that throughout the book when describing the geography of different regions (not to mention his use of words like "oceanic" and "cottonwool", and his detailed description of things like clouds).

He was either incredibly brilliant, with a natural mind for such geography, vocabulary, and description, or he was one of the most rigorous and studious novelists ever. Both cases would be equally impressive. Overall, I'm just really curious to know more about his writing process.

I think that's the general idea of my feelings on this book. A really good novel would leave me thinking about the characters and the story, or the emotions they aroused. Again, not sure how much of "Big Rock" is an actual novel, but I could care less about those things in the aftermath. I'm more impressed by the intellectual feat it took to rigorously document all of the places and memories, and I wonder how he did it.

Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

As a friend is currently the Artist in Residence at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan, I felt it was long overdue for me to read some Wallace Stegner. And I was truly not disappointed.

This particular work is one of his earlier ones and is regarded as being partly autobiographical. It chronicles the tumultuous marriage of Bo and Elsa Mason as they lead a nomadic existence in the western US and Canada. The tough and sometimes violent Bo is constantly chasing after various "get rich quick" schemes, some of which are legal and others not.

The family's only period of stability is a five-year stretch in Whitemud (obviously a fictionalized Eastend), Saskatchewan. The story is narrated at different times through the perspectives of Bo, Elsa, and their two sons, Chester and Bruce. Consequently, we come to know all of the characters extremely well, and they are all very well-developed and complex.

The author writes in a highly introspective style, allowing us to understand what they are thinking and what drives them to do the things they do. I was even able to feel sympathy for all of them, even at times the unlikable Bo. Stegner's writing is very descriptive and dense, making this not a quick read, but a very good one indeed.

I was particularly moved by the description of the Spanish Flu pandemic as it affected Whitemud, and I'm certain this is one of the autobiographical elements of this book. It was fascinating to see the parallels between this pandemic and the one we have recently experienced. I will definitely be reading more Wallace Stegner, but first, I need to read something quick and easy.

I don't know why it has taken me such a long time to read Wallace Stegner's fiction. It feels rather odd to be awarding such high marks to a novel published in 1943. However, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is truly a compelling narrative that powerfully captures some of the rougher times in American history.

I'm certain that all the praise I have for this book has been offered before, but I'll offer it again. Although the book starts slowly - Part I being the weakest part - it gains strength as it unfolds the struggles of Harry "Bo" Mason, Elsa Mason, and their sons, Chet and Bruce. They are a fictional family that lived from the early 1900s through the Depression and Prohibition in the upper Midwest, the Far West, and parts of Canada. There was no safety net for them as they farmed until they gave up farming for Bo's bootlegging. Moreover, there was no general consciousness or legal protection to keep a woman and her children safe from the abuses of their husband and father. Some of these abuses were simply the dark sides of Bo's emotional make-up. The force that gave him great energy was also emotionally destructive and a source of resilience. But this combination was hard on Elsa, more or less deadly for Chet, and damaging for Bruce, who surprisingly manages to survive as the brightest and most determined of the story's main characters.

Elsa's stoicism and her romantic decision to stick with Bo when she knew she shouldn't gives the book a kind of moral north star. If you want to know what's right in life, look to her. If you want to know what's probably wrong, look to Bo, and to a lesser extent to the abused and defensive boys.

As a writer, Stegner is both ambitious and dextrous. There are passages in this book that rival Willa Cather's beautiful accounts of the Midwest. There are passages with the drive of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men". And there are passages that presage William Kennedy's marvelous Albany tales of small-time hoodlums walking the plank between a bottle of whiskey and a bag full of cash.

This is a sad book. As many times as Bo gets knocked down, taking the family with him, he's certain to get back up... only to be knocked down again. The America of that period was rough on unschooled working men and women, farmers, common laborers, dreamers, and people who could not depend on, or get along with, their families.

Of course, it's still rough for many in this country, but not as rough as then. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, it's also not as exciting, physical, or even sensual. There's essentially no God in Stegner's fictional world, but there are two factors that he handles and relies upon with true mastery. The first is the beauty of the natural world, the world of mountains, of hunting, of sun, wind, snow, hard rocks, and sweet-smelling pines. The second is memory and memory's ability to provide some little incentive to keep on going, some fine moment that fills the worst moments with hope. These two elements move the Masons forward and sustain Bruce, transforming him from a fairly desperate, frightened little boy into a wary but self-reliant man. The rest don't make it; simple as that: they just don't make it. And that's why "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a sad book but a worthy book, unbelievably packed with the drama of the mundane on the edge of constant disaster.

I managed to get through this a long time ago and firmly decided that I had no desire to read any more of his books.

This wasn't due to poor writing skills on his part. In fact, his writing was quite good.

The real reason was that the story was just overwhelmingly sad.

By the time I finished reading, I felt completely gutted, as if my heart had been ripped out.

The emotions it evoked were so intense that I simply couldn't bring myself to endure that kind of pain again.

It was as if the sadness seeped into my soul and left a lasting impression.

Even now, when I think back on that book, I can still feel the weight of the sadness.

So, despite the quality of his writing, I have chosen to avoid his books in the future.

I just don't think my heart can take it.

Good book.

Lots of very flawed characters.

Who’s to “blame” when a family goes wrong? "Blame" is in quotes because I wonder whether there is true blame. Can we be blamed for being ourselves, wanting our dreams/hopes/desires, carrying the hurts of our yesterdays? Can we be blamed for living by the confinements imposed on us by our past?

I suppose, in a way, we can. We could break the pattern, change our destiny, etc. In theory, it's all possible. But it takes a very aware (of one's own issues) and strong person to break those bonds. Nigh impossible when faced with everyday life and responsibilities. So, we’re left with our flawed selves.

Bo wants that brass ring. He keeps grabbing for it. However, he doesn't have the patience or awareness to see when he's got it. A couple of his schemes worked out but for others because he bailed before they reached fruition. He's hopeless in this way. He'll always be too cowardly, weak or obtuse to hang in for the long haul on his schemes. He wants instant gratification.

On the other hand, he hangs in on his marriage. He never thought of leaving Elsa. He never gave up on his sons. Granted, he wasn't best at showing his concerns, love or interest but it showed in small (very small) ways. Nothing that a child would recognize, though, so does that mean his concerns, love and interest are non-existent? To the child, yes.

Elsa is also weak. Her weakness enables Bo in his ways without bringing him any strength. She endures all. She wants a "home" but she works with Bo, which diminishes the reality of finding a home. She's a contradiction to her own dreams & desires.

Her love for Bo is destructive to the family by moulding herself to his goals/dreams, she sacrifices the children. What's worse is that she is aware of making this sacrifice.

Elsa knowingly sacrifices her children; Bo unknowingly sacrificed them. Who's more to blame?

Yet, after all this talk of blame and sacrificing, neither Bo nor Elsa is to blame. They are flawed. They are products of their upbringing and characters. They tried their best in their own ways. The boys grew up as we all do in our circumstances: to the best of their ability. Sadly, sometimes, the damage cannot be undone.

All in all, this book is full of flawed characters living everyday, real lives of the times. Their thoughts and concerns reflect misunderstanding, misinterpretation, unknown history & so on that each of us lives through every day. We don't know whether our interpretations and so on are correct but we react to them anyway and they change us, form us, mould us, etc. It's life. In that way, we are all flawed and the best we can do is try to recognize that fact and reach out to try to understand others through communication. Each member of the Mason family kept to themselves. They didn't have perspective to see each other as whole. Communication could have brought them that.

The book has made me think a lot about family. Stegner has, I think, managed to touch on a person's personal journey in learning their place in the world through learning about their family.

For example, we don't, perhaps can’t, really understand our parents, do we? We have ideas, thoughts and opinions of them but don't, and can't, always understand how they became who they are, how they are, think as they do because we can’t live their lives through their eyes or with their understanding. However, we've all given thought to these questions (who are they? what made them who they are?....where do I come from?) and our answers to ourselves have shaped our thoughts of our parents and by extension ourselves.

This is what Stegner has managed to do well in this book. He's exploring family relationships and how they affect the offspring. What he says about family is universal to all families, regardless of circumstances. We don't all come from bootlegging families but we all come from families parented by people whose history, experiences and thoughts we don't always know. This history shaped the people our parents are, which in turn shaped us.

I enjoyed this book. It's got a lot of meat to it. It's "family" at its best and its worst. It delves deep into the complex web of human emotions, relationships, and the impact of our past on our present and future. The characters are so vividly drawn that they seem to step out of the pages and into our lives. We can see ourselves in their flaws and in their attempts to find meaning and happiness in a world that is often unforgiving. It makes us question our own relationships and the choices we make. It's a thought-provoking and engaging read that I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in exploring the mysteries of the human heart and the power of family.

A very long and extremely dense story unfolds, delving deep into the married life of Bo Mason, his wife Elsa, and their two sons, Chet and Bruce. This tale is masterfully written by Stegner, who has crafted the personalities of each character with remarkable detail, truly breathing life into them. Bo Mason is an overly ambitious man, always in search of greener pastures. He is never content with what he is doing and is constantly on the move, onto his next scheme. The only area where he achieves any semblance of success is in bootlegging whiskey. The family is in a perpetual state of flux, constantly relocating from one city to another, eventually residing in several different states and even Canada. Elsa, on the other hand, is the steady rock of the family. After a rough start, she has come to accept the life she is living with Bo. The story is set in the early twentieth century and, as I've been informed, is very loosely based on Stegner's own early life. This is yet another masterpiece by the amazing Wallace Stegner.

I don't even hardly know what to say about this book - it's truly wonderful.

This is my second book by Stegner. The first was Angle of Repose several years ago now. (What can I say? I like the big ones!) I liked Angle tremendously, but Big Rock Candy Mountain is so, so much better.

From the earliest pages, it's clear you're in the hands of a masterful writer. Stegner's characters are incredibly distinct and highly engaging. He writes with empathy, yet also with such realism and wisdom. The world is indeed hard. There are different strata of people. Humans are complex beings. Love is often impractical and can make us woefully unhappy.

Purists may disagree, but there's something almost Steinbeckian about Stegner in the way he captures a time, a place, and a people. Here, we have a particular portrait of a very normal, very common class of people attempting to make life work across the West in the best ways they can.

Isn't it funny how it's hardest to be articulate about the books you most deeply enjoy and appreciate? There's so much to say here about the titular theme, the way that family is crafted and created, about how the deepest joys and bonds in our lives can let us down the most, and about the value of persistence and resistance, grace, and wherewithal.

Gah. I'm just going to stop reviewing and recommend that you seek it out and read it. But if you DO read it, let me know. I want to talk more about Elsa and Bruce - characters who I suspect will remain dear to me for a long, long time.

This is one of those remarkable books. From the very first page, you can sense that it's going to be truly outstanding. It features old-fashioned character development and beautiful storytelling that simply captivates the reader.

How on earth had I never heard of Stegner before? It's a mystery to me. Fortunately, I have my parents to thank for introducing me to such an amazing writer. Both my mom and dad read this book before passing it on to me, and I'm so grateful for that.

I'm now looking forward to delving into more of Stegner's works. I can't wait to see what other literary treasures he has in store.

P.S. Here's a spoiler about the ending. That ending is really quite rough. It feels as if the book has essentially come to a close when Chet dies. However, it then grinds on for another 100 pages or so as we witness everyone else's passing. Ooof. It's a bit of a downer, to be honest. But despite that, the overall quality of the book is still very high.