Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West

by Wallace Stegner, T.H. Watkins (Afterword)

Overview

Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs gathers together Wallace Stegner’s most important and memorable writings on the American West: its landscapes, diverse history, and shifting identity; its beauty, fragility, and power. With subjects ranging from the writer’s own “migrant childhood” to the need to protect what remains of the great western wilderness (which Stegner dubs “the geography of hope”) to poignant profiles of western writers such as John Steinbeck and Norman Maclean, this collection is a riveting testament to the power of place. At the same time it communicates vividly the sensibility and range of this most gifted of American writers, historians, and environmentalists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375759321
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/09/2002
Series:	Modern Library Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	222,037
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 8.06(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

T. H. Watkins (1936–2000) was the first Wallace Stegner Dis-tinguished Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. Watkins wrote twenty-eight books on history, the environment, and nature, including Righteous Pilgrim: The Life of Harold Ickes, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Award.

Date of Birth:

February 18, 1909

Date of Death:

April 13, 1993

Place of Birth:

Lake Mills, Iowa

Place of Death:

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Education:

B.A., University of Utah, 1930; attended University of California, 1932-33; Ph. D., State University of Iowa, 1935

Editorial Reviews

No one has written more or better about the West, past and present, than Wallace Stegner.”—USA Today

From the Publisher

The American West is ``less a place than a process,'' asserts Stegner. In these 17 graceful essays, most previously published in magazines or books, the novelist explores the dynamic tension between the West as means of escape from irksome obligations and its underappreciated role as teacher of hard lessons of community and environmental conscience. A masterful stylist who captures the untamed energy of the West in every inflection, Stegner paints word pictures of the landscape full of dry clarity. He has ``Western migratoriness'' in his blood, as revealed by autobiographical sketches tracing his peripatetic childhood from an Iowa farm to North Dakota wheat towns to Washington logging camps. In a deeply moving confessional letter to his mother he measures his life against his unspoken promises to the woman who died 55 years earlier. His love of unspoilt nature and of the West shines forth. Author tour. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The acclaimed writer (Angle of repose, Spectator bird, among other novels, stories, and nonfiction) records thoughts and impressions of his own and others' life and work. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews