Jackson J. Benson, author of an earlier biography of John Steinbeck, was both a friend and admirer of his subject, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Wallace Stegner, author of
Angle of Repose and
Crossing to Safety. Benson's biography argues for Stegner's literary stature, rejecting the regionalist label with which he is sometimes diminished, and elevates Stegner's calm, ordered, old-fashioned life. Stegner's writings are credited with the reinvention of the American West, saving it from the Wild West myth, reclaiming it through a reverence for the land, for nature, and for rural simplicity and independence. He founded a superb writing school at Stanford, proved an effective polemicist for environmental causes, and became, Benson argues, "possibly the most accomplished man of American letters in our time."
