F I C T I O N :

The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943)

Stegner’s first big autobiographical novel. In creating the “Masons,” he retells the Stegners’ own

frontier life of homesteading on the prairie and looking for wealth in the next boomtown—with the

core of the book recreating Stegner’s own adolescence in Salt Lake City in the 1920s.

Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (original title: The Preacher And the Slave) (1950)

The “Wobbly” labor organizer Joe Hill was working in a Park City mine in 1914 when framed for

murder in Salt Lake City. He was executed (most say martyred) in 1915, and became a symbol of

the American worker’s fight against power. Stegner tells the story of the man and the myth.

Angle of Repose (1971)

Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel about a writer/artist and her mining engineer husband

roaming the West in the late 1800s. Their lives bring the West into the modern world. No Utah

locations, but their experiences mirror the stories of Park City, Eureka, and other frontier outposts.

Recapitulation (1979)

Bruce Mason, Stegner’s alter-ego in The Big Rock Candy Mountain, returns to Salt Lake City in his

sixties. He vividly remembers his Bohemian youth, weekend romance at Saltair, a wedding in San

Pete, the canyons of Capitol Reef… This is the great Salt Lake City novel.

Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner (1990)

Just three stories (“The Blue-Winged Teal,” “Maiden in the Tower,” and “The Volunteer”) use Utah

settings, but the homestead stories capture similar experiences from frontier Utah childhoods.

Stegner’s novels grew from these vignettes.

 

N O N F I C T I O N :

Mormon Country (1942)

Stegner’s lively ode to his home territory—and a popular history of the LDS colonization of Utah.

Plenty of character studies, including Earl Douglass at Dinosaur, Everett Ruess, Marie Ogden and

the Home of Truth, and Butch Cassidy. His tone is more nostalgia and reminiscence than history.

One Nation (1945)

Stegner’s visionary look at race relations at the end of World War II. Short essays on American

Indians, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, and Catholics.

the West (1954)

Stegner’s life of Powell is also the biography of the Colorado Plateau as a place and concept.

There is no better introduction to the land and natural history of southern Utah.

Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier (1955)

Stegner’s memoir of his Saskatchewan homestead. Vivid stories about isolated ranches, small

towns, and challenging weather—all a mirror of pioneer Utah.

This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers (1955)

Stegner edited this first Sierra Club “battle book,” using natural history essays and photography to

fight dams proposed within Dinosaur National Monument.

The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964)

Though non-Mormon, Stegner’s sympathy for the ordeal of the Mormon migration, his wide view

as a cultural historian, and his gift for storytelling make this far more than a narrow work of history.

The Sound of Mountain Water (1969)

A collection of essays with plenty of history and geography. Includes “Wilderness Letter,” and

essays about Glen Canyon, Navajo rodeos, and growing up in Salt Lake City. Stegner also writes

about western values in “Born A Square” and western writers, including DeVoto.

Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil (1971)

Written as a “work-for-hire” for the oil company, Aramco, this yarn of exploring for oil in Arabian

deserts parallels the oil development ramping up on the public lands of Utah. (The Stegner family

dislikes the edition currently in print).

American Places (1985)

A collaboration with his son, Page, and the photographer, Eliot Porter, in celebration of the U.S.

bicentennial. Stegner devotes full essays to the Utah High Plateaus and Great Salt Lake.

The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto (1989)

Stegner’s friend and mentor, Bernard DeVoto, grew up in Ogden and wrote brilliant histories of the

West. In this biography, Stegner comes to grips with his iconic friend and their parallel roots in the

Utah landscape.

Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs (1992)

The last collection of essays published in his lifetime, this includes Stegner’s letter of apology to his

mother, “much too late,” and the essential essays that sum up his philosophy of living in arid lands

(originally published as The American West as Living Space.)

Marking the Sparrow’s Fall: The Making of the American West (1998; Page Stegner, ed.)

Stegner’s son, Page, made these selections, including “Wilderness Letter,” the classic short story

about cowboys coping with a devastating winter storm, “Genesis;” and essays about Salt Lake

City, Saltair, Lake Powell, the San Juan River, and several wonderful statements of Stegner’s

synthesis of the American West.

 

B I O G R A P H Y & B A C K G R O U N D :

Conversations With Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature (1983)

    Stegner called these conversations with Richard Etulain the closest he came to autobiography.

Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work by Jackson Benson (1996)

    Especially good on analysis and background of Stegner’s writing.

The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner (2007; Page Stegner, ed.)

The letters span Stegner’s life and work and breadth of interests. Informal and intimate. Utah

sprinkled throughout.

 

Wallace Stegner and the American West by Phillip Fradkin (2008)

Goes beyond standard literary analysis to place Stegner in context in the history of conservation in

20th Century America.

 

Stephen Trimble

779 4t h Avenue

Sal t Lake City, UT 84 103

801-364-3031 (home office)

801-364-1015 (fax)

801-585-9120 (Tanner Center)

Steve’s website: www.stephentrimble.net

Read about yourselves in Steve’s Stegner Fellowship blog: www.stegner100.com

thanks!

Wallace Stegner Centennial Fellow,

Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah