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A review by jdintr
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
4.0
This is an epic look into the American mindset, and Bo Mason is one of the great characters in American letters--one a par with such flawed obsessives like Captain Ahab and the speaker in "The Raven."
Big Rock Candy Mountain follows Mason, his bride Elsa, and their two suns on a restless odyssey through the West. Ever in search of the next Big Thing, Mason misses out on the Yukon Gold Rush, tries his hand at homesteading and property speculation, and eventually "makes it" running alcohol during prohibition and running a casino in Reno, Nevada. Even this success is transitory.
At the center of the book, however, is an American family. It is in Bo Mason's complicated, abusive parenting skills that we see the true fruits of his schemes; it is in his relationship with Elsa that we find his few redeeming qualities and the seeds of his tragic end.
This book really gets moving once Bo's whiskey-running scheme is in place, and I felt that it dragged on at the end with Elsa's drawn-out death and Bruce's attempts to put his parents' experiences into a healthy context. Still, this is a great book, and I highly recommend it.
Big Rock Candy Mountain follows Mason, his bride Elsa, and their two suns on a restless odyssey through the West. Ever in search of the next Big Thing, Mason misses out on the Yukon Gold Rush, tries his hand at homesteading and property speculation, and eventually "makes it" running alcohol during prohibition and running a casino in Reno, Nevada. Even this success is transitory.
At the center of the book, however, is an American family. It is in Bo Mason's complicated, abusive parenting skills that we see the true fruits of his schemes; it is in his relationship with Elsa that we find his few redeeming qualities and the seeds of his tragic end.
This book really gets moving once Bo's whiskey-running scheme is in place, and I felt that it dragged on at the end with Elsa's drawn-out death and Bruce's attempts to put his parents' experiences into a healthy context. Still, this is a great book, and I highly recommend it.