Wallace Stegner · 1971 · overland

Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer-winning 1971 novel. A wheelchair-bound historian, Lyman Ward, pieces together the life of his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, a refined Eastern artist who married a mining engineer and followed him through the rough camps of the frontier West in the 1870s and 80s. Her restless, disappointed journey across California, Colorado, Mexico, and Idaho becomes a meditation on marriage, ambition, and the angle at which a life finally comes to rest.

1. 1
   Milton

   Susan Burling, a cultivated Eastern artist, marries the engineer Oliver Ward and leaves New York for the West.

2. 2
   New Almaden

   To a quicksilver mining camp in the California hills.

3. 3
   Leadville

   Up to the silver boomtown of Leadville, high in the Colorado Rockies.

4. 4
   Michoacan

   Deep into Mexico for an ill-starred mining venture.

5. 5
   The Snake River

   And to the canyons of Idaho for a grand, doomed irrigation scheme.

6. 6
   Grass Valley

   Until at last they settle at Grass Valley, the angle of repose, where their grandson tells their story.