By contrast, the Morgans are poor, from undistinguished, almost anonymous backgrounds with no intellectual or spiritual history behind them. The latter couple are wealthy, have a large family and a strong sense of their place in the world, linked as they are to the Transcendentalist tradition of the American East Coast. The memories cover the decades of a four-way friendship between two couples: Larry and Sally Morgan, and Sid and Charity Lang. The reader is given a series of flash-backs that occur over the course of a single day late in Morgan’s life. The novel is told in the voice of Larry Morgan, a creative writing professor and novelist.

However, their lives are not without tragedy or loss. His characters live by ideals which test and sustain them and which, once the dross of other distractions is whittled away, are the testimony of their lives. Love, the company and solace of true friends, the quiet loyalty that people often show to each other, and the unremarked fortitude of the well-lived life are each dwelt upon in Stegner’s tale. Stegner extols the virtues of not parting with what one would smuggle to the other side. I have crossed to Safety with? For I am ThereĪnd what I would not part with I have kept. The things forbidden that while the Customs slept So when I saw it for the first time on a bookshelf in a store I treated myself, reasoning that it might be just the thing to read while on holiday, a cool balm for the distraction-ravaged.Ĭrossing to Safety takes its title from a Robert Frost poem “I Could Give All to Time”: She was as good as her word: I found in Stegner’s prose a quiet forest glade where one might linger and contemplate life for a while before plunging back into the tempest of contemporary professional existence. I had read it before about seven years ago - a library copy recommended to me by a trustworthy colleague who expressed such ardent longing and love for it that there was no question of me not checking it out. Wallace Stegner’s quiet novel Crossing to Safety stands as a refreshing retreat in my reader’s history.

William stegner crossing to safety