A review by bobbo49
The Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Wallace Stegner

4.0

I didn't even know until I finished this book that it was semi-autobiographical, an effort by Stegner to come to terms with his own rough childhood and family of birth. Beautifully written as all of his work, the story follows the family from the early lives of the mother and father, through their wanderings westward into North Dakota, British Columbia, Montana, California, Nevada . . . in search of fortune (father) and peace/stability (mother), while the two boys grow into their own struggles for self and identity. Not quite so personally compelling to me as some other Stegner (i.e., those works dealing with the lives and perceptions and struggles of older people like me!), but still a wonderful and insightful read.