Community Reviews
This is a beautifully written book, a story about enduring friendships, enduring marriages, and the ways that friends and spouses grow through life's often difficult journey to become more than what they were at the start.
Crossing to Safety is not a plot-driven book at all. It is a book about two couples who meet when they are young and the husbands are both aspiring writers and academics, and the close friendship they maintain through the decades. During those decades, Larry's professional star rises while Sid's sort of languishes, while it is Sid's wife, Charity, who always harbored and labored for her man to reach professional greatness.
Stegner's writing is elegant and sometimes lyrical, especially when he is focused on the magnificence of nature, which he obviously cherished. Near the end of the book, when Larry is exhausted from a long search for his friend Sid, who has gone missing and for whom he has left a note on the car, Stegner writes this paragraph:
"The moonlight has gathered and concentrated itself, the lawn lies out there pallid and even, the Rambler squats upon its shadow, the note is now a petal of pale flame. The folded chairs lie on the grass, faintly gleaming, like a pile of bones. From far off, drifting down from the hilltop, comes the sound of singing."
That is prose that is almost poetry. Most of the book is not in lyrical in that way; most moves the story forward in a low, even pace, with plenty of dialogue and enough movement to keep you wondering what will happen to these closest of friends.
Crossing to Safety is not a plot-driven book at all. It is a book about two couples who meet when they are young and the husbands are both aspiring writers and academics, and the close friendship they maintain through the decades. During those decades, Larry's professional star rises while Sid's sort of languishes, while it is Sid's wife, Charity, who always harbored and labored for her man to reach professional greatness.
Stegner's writing is elegant and sometimes lyrical, especially when he is focused on the magnificence of nature, which he obviously cherished. Near the end of the book, when Larry is exhausted from a long search for his friend Sid, who has gone missing and for whom he has left a note on the car, Stegner writes this paragraph:
"The moonlight has gathered and concentrated itself, the lawn lies out there pallid and even, the Rambler squats upon its shadow, the note is now a petal of pale flame. The folded chairs lie on the grass, faintly gleaming, like a pile of bones. From far off, drifting down from the hilltop, comes the sound of singing."
That is prose that is almost poetry. Most of the book is not in lyrical in that way; most moves the story forward in a low, even pace, with plenty of dialogue and enough movement to keep you wondering what will happen to these closest of friends.
Wallace Stegner has a way of telling the stories of everyday people but pulling you in right away by getting to the very soul of each of his characters, and you.
Larry and Sally Morgan are newly arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, fresh from New Mexico. Larry has secured a temporary teaching position at the university, hoping it will become permanent. They are immediately taken under the wing of Charity and Sid Lang. Sid also teaches at the university. Sally and Charity discover they're both pregnant, due around the same time, and instantly bond. So begins a decades-long friendship that takes them from Wisconsin to Vermont and beyond, and takes us through the triumphs and trials of life and relationships.
Larry and Sally Morgan are newly arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, fresh from New Mexico. Larry has secured a temporary teaching position at the university, hoping it will become permanent. They are immediately taken under the wing of Charity and Sid Lang. Sid also teaches at the university. Sally and Charity discover they're both pregnant, due around the same time, and instantly bond. So begins a decades-long friendship that takes them from Wisconsin to Vermont and beyond, and takes us through the triumphs and trials of life and relationships.
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