Crossing to Safety

Title: Crossing to Safety

Author: Wallace Stegner

Pages: 335

Genre: Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Sally and Larry Morgan are excited for Larry's first job in the Writing department at a university in Wisconsin. During their first days there they meet an enchanting, rich couple Sid and Charity Lang. The Lang's take the Morgan's under their wings and introduce them to society and many good times in Madison. The book follows the two couples and their relationship throughout the next 4 or 5 decades.

My Review: I really, really liked the first two-thirds of this book. After that, a long time has passed and I never felt like I could relate to the book like I had been able to during the first part. It was refreshing to read an honest account of what appears to be two fairly typical couples in the prime of their lives.

From the Book: "(p. 50) Pleasant things to hear, though hearing them from him embarrasses me. I soak up the praise but feel obliged to disparage the gift. I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something--forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something."

"(p. 130) Actually I am pretty pregnant with the news Sid brought me, but glad we have not spread it. The girls look very happy. With their heads bound up in babushkas they might be out of the peasant chorus of a Russian opera. Any minute now we will sing and dance to the balalaika. Charity is tall and striking; Sally smaller, darker, quieter. One dazzles, the other warms. In a couple of hours I will need sympathy, but for now I like being washed by the wind."

"(p. 171) A western buckaroo, I share his scorn for people who go camping by the book, relying on the authority of some half-assed assistant scoutmaster whose total experience outdoors probably consists of two overnight hikes and a weekend in the Catskills. But we have just had that confrontation. The one who goes by Pritchard's book is Sid's wife, and I am wary. It is not my expedition. I am a guest here."

"(p. 191) You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine."