Recapitulation - Softcover

Stegner, Wallace Earle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803291655 ISBN 13: 9780803291652

Publisher: Bison Books, 1986

Synopsis

Bruce Mason, first seen as a youth embittered by the events of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, returns to Salt Lake City forty-five years later for the funeral of an aunt. As Bruce makes the perfunctory arrangements for the funeral, we enter with him on an intensely private and painful inner pilgrimage populated by the ghosts of his past. Recollections of them become a source of revelation for Bruce Mason. He makes peace with his dead father and finally comes around to what he is: a respected professional diplomat and a man with a past worth inheriting.

Recapitulation is a moving novel about self-knowledge dearly bought and ultimate survival by one of America's most distinguished novelists.

About this title

About the Author:

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) was the author of, among other novels, All the Little Live Things (winner of a Commonwealth Club Gold Medal), Angle of Repose (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and The Spectator Bird (winner of the National Book Award). His nonfiction includes The Sound of Mountain Water, The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto, and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West. Three of his short stories won O. Henry Prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

Review:

"In an age of explicit sex scenes and of male-female hates and struggles, it is wonderful to open this book. . . . Despite the flapper fashions and references to prohibition and old Fords, one comes out aware of universal, human feelings that have nothing to do with time—present, future, or past."—Christian Science Monitor (Christian Science Monitor)

"Recapitulation is rich in the grittier American truths. . . . It has a piece of our pathos at its core."—Benjamin DeMott, New York Times Book Review (Benjamin DeMott New York Times Book Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0803291655
• ISBN 13: 9780803291652
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278