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fivelentz 's review for:
Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner
There are some books that are simple, and clean, and spare, and true. Crossing to Safety was, for me, one of those books. A recommendation from an elderly friend's book club, I started the book with some annoyance--an "American masterpiece" I had never heard of, written by a "celebrated" American writer whose name I did not know? But the individuals at the center of the book, coupled in sets of two and four, were intriguing from the beginning. Could it be that "nature or nurture" is not only a question about parenting but a question about each of us? Are we born who we are or do we form each other? The couples in this book demonstrate the force of the latter as they each become more and more the essence of themselves. Unlikely, the book seems to say, that they would be the same people without their intertwined relationship. The book is gentle and, although there is sorrow, it happens as it sometimes does in life...naturally, as if it were meant to be. This may be a book that is best suited to be read on in the lazy afternoons of summer Sundays and not in the noisy overheated environment of an airport terminal or subway car. But it is one of the few books that I admired and loved reading with total acceptance of its flaws. My hat, Mr. Stegner--apparently as humble as he was wise--is off to you.