Helpful Score: 3
Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Joe Allston and his wife Ruth, have left the East Coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga and zipless sex; and Marian Catlin, an attractive young woman whose otherworldly innocence is far more appealing--and far more dangerous.
Helpful Score: 1
There's nobody like Wallace Stegner who can write so vividly and well from the heart, allowing such vulnerability that we the readers are taken right into his heart as he describes his emotions. His prose is as always, just beautiful. Cover said 'will hold any reader to its last haunting page'--that was true.
Helpful Score: 1
An intellectual, piercing, poignant story of a woman stricken with cancer, and her will to live. The prose is truly beautiful, but this is no quick or easy read. I highly recommend Stegner's writing.