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Jan 25, 2019blue_41 rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
"Angle of Repose" is Wallace Stegner's big novel of a family building and adapting to the development of the West in the latter part of the 19th century. The main characters are mining engineer Oliver Ward, his wife Susan B. Ward, who is a writer and illustrator, and their descendant, Lyman Ward, who narrates the story as a retired historian living in the California gold country. The novel builds and moves slowly, but contains insight into the complicated lives of the characters, into the trials of living in newly settled arid lands, and the nature of trust and responsibility. The novel received great critical praise, and Wallace Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is controversial in that much of the material he used was adapted from writings by Mary H. Foote, on whom the character of Susan Burling Ward is based.