31 of 52.

My friend Becky recommended this book during our Western roadtrip. She said it was set in Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho, so it seemed only appropriate to pick it up after we'd traversed those same areas ourselves. I'm so glad I did. It's been my favorite novel so far this year, which really is no small surprise considering it won the Pulitzer in 1972.



Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

There was a time up there in Idaho when everything was wrong; your husbands' career, your marriage, your sense of yourself, your confidence, all came unglued together. Did you come down out of that into some restful 30 degree angle and live happily ever after? When you died at ninety-one, the New York Times obituary spoke of you as a Western woman, a Western writer and artist. Would you have accepted the label?...We shared this house all the years of my childhood, and a good many summers afterward. Was the quiet I always felt in you really repose? I wish I thought so. It is one of the questions I want the papers to answer.