A review by cassiope_fastigiata
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

4.0

'Crossing to Safety' is the title of the first chapter of 'The End of Your Life Book Club,' which has led me to several recent reads. This book could have ended up, as it did for the author of 'The End of Your Life Book Club', a book I long 'intended to read', as it didn't really fit my current criteria for new reads: something that will take me far in space and time from the concrete jungle of Manhattan. This one only goes as far as Madison and Vermont, and back the time of a generation or two. However, I did pick it up off my to-read pile after only a few weeks of purchasing it, and was quickly drawn in to this quiet novel about two couples who meet in their early twenties, and who are now together again as the most exhuberant and central personality of the foursome is dying, in her early sixties. A beautiful portrait of two marriages and friendship, of criss-crossing paths of joys and of tears, of mortality. Highly recommended, although it may not fit all moods.