Rating: 
Summary: A book about the harsh realities of the American dream
Review: While Bo Mason continually believes that the pot of gold is round over the next hill, his wife and children are bearing the brunt of his inability to settle down and make himself respectable. Once again, Wallace Stegener has unveiled a mosaic of complex human relationships which keeps the reader hooked until the last word. He continues to prove himself with every book of his I read. I just can't decide whether to admire Elsa for sticking by her husband through it all or wish she had left him to march to the beat of her own drum.
Rating:
Summary: The Universal in the West
Review: `Big Rock Candy Mountain' is the story of ambition and security, of restlessness and comfort, of expansion and insularity. In Bo Mason, the book presents te expansive here who cannot be tied down. It presents the restless dreamer whose only motive is to find the pace that is better. It presented him as the daring rogue that men envy and women find irresistible. It also presents him as the husband of Elsa and the father of Chester and Bruce. It presents him as the husband who deeply loves his wife and sons but whose instinctive drives forces him to hurt them deeply. The book presents Elsa, Bo's wife, whose dream is the security of a loving family but who is ineluctably attracted to the daring bo who can free her from a life of restriction and drudgery. In short this is a book about the conflict within the human soul that pits the need for independence and adventure against the desire for security and safety. It is set in the Canadian and American west at the time of the westward expansion. It is a book about real people that delve deeply into the generic human condition. Its characters are real and finely detailed yet it is more than just an account of a particular family in a particular time. It explores grand themes an yet it true to the motivations of its characters. It is a book that finds the universal in the particular and the instant in eternity. It is a book that will be remembered.
| 
