Crossing to Safety: Wallace Stegner (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Stegner's powerful but unassuming narrative traces the bond that develops between the Langs and the Morgans from their first meeting in 1937 through their eventual separation on the occasion of Charity's death from cancer. JENNIFER BYRNE: I'm getting a sense of your taste, Chars, because it's Charlotte who's brought us our classic this evening. It's the 15th and final novel of Wallace Stegner - a deceptively simple story of the lifelong friendship between two couples, with the beautiful title Crossing To Safety. JASON STEGER: But it was what, 50 years after his first story, or first book came out. It's clearly the work of somebody who's had a huge amount of experience.

JASON STEGER: She is capable of great generosity, but she's pretty... She'd be driving you bonkers, wouldn't she? JASON STEGER: Yeah, I can't disagree with anything. I find that there's something wonderful about it.Crossing to Safety is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by "The Dean of Western Writers", [1] Wallace Stegner. It gained broad literary acclaim and commercial popularity. There is even, as my eyes make better use of the dusk and I lift my head off the pillow to look around, something marvelously reassuring about the room, a warmth even in the gloom. Associations, probably, but also color. The unfinished pine of the walls and ceilings has mellowed, over the years, to a rich honey color, as if stained by the warmth of the people who built it into a shelter for their friends. I take it as an omen; and though I remind myself why we are here, I can’t shake the sense of loved familiarity into which I just awoke.

My feet take me up the road to the gate, and through it. Just inside the gate the road forks. I ignore the Ridge House road and choose instead the narrow dirt road that climbs around the hill to the right. John Wightman, whose cottage sits at the end of it, died fifteen years ago. He will not be up to protest my walking in his ruts. It is a road I have walked hundreds of times, a lovely lost tunnel through the trees, busy this morning with birds and little shy rustling things, my favorite road anywhere. For a minute I stand listening to her breathing, wondering if I dare go out and leave her. But she is deeply asleep, and should stay that way for a while. No one is going to be coming around at this hour. This early piece of the morning is mine. Tiptoeing, I go out onto the porch and stand exposed to what, for all my senses can tell me, might as well be 1938 as 1972. GEOFFREY COUSINS: But it's a bit like, to me, a sculptor who doesn't need layers of lights and what have you, who can take a piece of wood or marble, and just with a few chisels make something incredible, have an amazing image emerge from very simple materials. To me, that's what he does, and I find that more impressive than somebody who's flashing laser lights all over the room. MARIEKE HARDY: I loved it too. I loved it. I loved how gentle it was. It was like a really long Raymond Carver story. To me, it was about people. There wasn't a huge amount of drama in it, which he talks about as well. He said, 'If I was writing this book as a drama, I can see what would happen. This would happen, this would happen.' But it's this gentle, long... it's a book about human beings, and it's so beautifully done. MAN: (Reads) 'When the Langs opened their hearts to us, we crept gratefully in. We felt their friendship as freezing travellers feel a dry room and a fire, and we were never the same thereafter. We thought better of ourselves, thought better of the world. If we could've foreseen the future during those good days, we might not have the nerve to venture into it. Good fortune and happiness have never been able to deceive me for long.'

GEOFFREY COUSINS: They do. I agree, it's a moral tale, and a wonderfully told one. I can't say enough about it. I cried in this book, and I don't often do that, and if I do, I don't normally admit it. JASON STEGER: No, no. I think you're right. It's an extraordinary book. I like the way it's narrated. I liked... as you touched on, Larry, you know, he talks about writing, telling you this story, writing this sort of memoir/novel as he's going along. But in any, sort of, overt, post-mortem way.