Angle of Repose (1971) by Wallace Stegner, published in an elegant collector’s edition by the Franklin Library, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that masterfully intertwines the grandeur and grit of the American West with intimate family drama. This Franklin Library release—renowned for its handsome full-leather binding, 22-karat gold accents, and silk moiré endpapers—elevates Stegner’s prose into a tactile treasure, often accompanied by commissioned illustrations or engraved motifs that echo the novel’s themes of memory and resilience.
The story unfolds through Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-bound historian who retreats to his grandparents’ home to reconstruct their lives from letters and journals. His research centers on Susan Burling Ward, a cultured Eastern artist drawn to the 19th-century frontier by her marriage to Oliver Ward, an engineer whose ambitions lead them from New Mexico mining camps to Idaho’s irrigation battles. Susan’s struggle to adapt her artistic dreams to the West’s brutal realities—and her eventual emotional fracture—mirrors Lyman’s own reckoning with his failed marriage and physical decline.
Stegner’s narrative, inspired by real letters of Mary Hallock Foote, blends historical precision with profound meditation on the “angle of repose”—a geological term for the steepest slope at which loose material stabilizes, here metaphorized as the elusive balance between ambition and contentment. The Franklin Library edition, with its heirloom-quality craftsmanship, mirrors the novel’s timeless exploration of legacy, love, and the cost of progress.
For readers who cherish: Lonesome Dove’s epic sweep, The Shipping News’s introspective depth, or My Ántonia’s pioneer lyricism.
