Status
Available
Call number
Series
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Publication
New York: Penguin Books, 1991
Description
Drama. Fiction. Literature. "Stegner has felt the spell of mountain and prairie, of drought, flood, and blizzard....A harrowing saga.". HTML: Bo Mason, his wife, and his two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks his fortune in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running throughout the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. Each peak of success takes him a little bit higher, and each valley sinks him lower than ever before�both financially and in his relationship with his family. Based largely on his own childhood, Stegner has created a masterful, harrowing saga of a family trying to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century. It is the conflict between the hardscrabble existence and Bo's pursuit of the frontier myth and of the American Dream that gives the book such resonance and power..… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member msf59
“the reflection of ecstasy and the shadow of tears.”
This is the story of the Mason family. Bo, Elsa and their two sons, Chet and Bruce. We follow them over thirty years, from Minnesota, North Dakota, Canada, Montana, Utah and a few other places in between. Bo is a restless, hot-tempered man,
This sweeping narrative, is filled with breath-taking descriptions of the West. Timber camps, Klondike mines, bootlegging, farming and running several “blind pigs”, (speakeasies). It is also filled with tension and apprehension, as this hapless family follows Bo, through one misadventure after another.
Stegner is a masterful storyteller and has quickly become one of my favorite writers.
“There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.”
This is the story of the Mason family. Bo, Elsa and their two sons, Chet and Bruce. We follow them over thirty years, from Minnesota, North Dakota, Canada, Montana, Utah and a few other places in between. Bo is a restless, hot-tempered man,
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always searching for the “next best thing”, even if that includes breaking the law and continuously putting his family in danger. His sons grow to fear and hate him. Elsa tries to tolerate and support her husband but is slowly ground down, by his excessive and reckless pursuit.This sweeping narrative, is filled with breath-taking descriptions of the West. Timber camps, Klondike mines, bootlegging, farming and running several “blind pigs”, (speakeasies). It is also filled with tension and apprehension, as this hapless family follows Bo, through one misadventure after another.
Stegner is a masterful storyteller and has quickly become one of my favorite writers.
“There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.”
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LibraryThing member whitreidtan
I read Crossing to Safety and Angle of Repose years ago and enjoyed both of them enough to zip out and collect many of Stegner's other works. All of these still languish on my shelves unread as so many other books have taken precedence, whether as a result of review commitments or just whim. And so
Based in part on Stegner's family history, this is the story of Bo Mason, his wife Elsa, and their two very different sons. When the story opens, Elsa has left home to keep house for her uncle after her own father married her best friend. But Elsa won't live long with her uncle, falling under the spell of the charming Bo Mason and his dreams for a bigger, brighter future. Unfortunately Bo is not only always in the wrong place at the wrong time, he doesn't have the patience to see through to fruition any of his more legitimate plans. And so he and Elsa and their children drift around the West looking for opportunity.
While Bo gambles, runs rum (during the Prohbition), and generally tiptoes back and forth over the legal line, Elsa holds the family together and builds a life for her boys. She is truly the center of the home, wherever that home is. As their children grow, they see one sided portraits of their parents and both boys come to despise Bo and Elsa.
This is a terribly depressing and heavy novel with no redemption offered to the reader. The terrible and sad ends of the characters are completely expected given their lives but no less affecting for the hardscrabble, defeated lives they have led. As is typical of Stegner, he has captured beautifully the time and places in the novel and has fleshed out characters who could walk off the page into your living room (not that you'd want that really). Given that this is semi-autobiographical, it makes you wonder how a person can really rise above an upbringing like the one in the novel and become such a masterpiece of an author.
Do not read this is you want to have a happy ending. Do not read this if you are looking for an easy read. This is a long slow descent into sadness and despair but it is well-done for all of that. And it is an amazing portrait of an historical time. All that said, I did not enjoy reading this, maybe because I didn't devote enough of a stretch of time solely to it and it will probably be some time before I tackle the remaining Stegners on my shelves.
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when I took this one off the shelf, I expected to have a wonderful experience, already knowing what an outstanding writer Stegner is. But for some reason, it just didn't capture me and it took me many, many months to actually work my way through the book to the conclusion.Based in part on Stegner's family history, this is the story of Bo Mason, his wife Elsa, and their two very different sons. When the story opens, Elsa has left home to keep house for her uncle after her own father married her best friend. But Elsa won't live long with her uncle, falling under the spell of the charming Bo Mason and his dreams for a bigger, brighter future. Unfortunately Bo is not only always in the wrong place at the wrong time, he doesn't have the patience to see through to fruition any of his more legitimate plans. And so he and Elsa and their children drift around the West looking for opportunity.
While Bo gambles, runs rum (during the Prohbition), and generally tiptoes back and forth over the legal line, Elsa holds the family together and builds a life for her boys. She is truly the center of the home, wherever that home is. As their children grow, they see one sided portraits of their parents and both boys come to despise Bo and Elsa.
This is a terribly depressing and heavy novel with no redemption offered to the reader. The terrible and sad ends of the characters are completely expected given their lives but no less affecting for the hardscrabble, defeated lives they have led. As is typical of Stegner, he has captured beautifully the time and places in the novel and has fleshed out characters who could walk off the page into your living room (not that you'd want that really). Given that this is semi-autobiographical, it makes you wonder how a person can really rise above an upbringing like the one in the novel and become such a masterpiece of an author.
Do not read this is you want to have a happy ending. Do not read this if you are looking for an easy read. This is a long slow descent into sadness and despair but it is well-done for all of that. And it is an amazing portrait of an historical time. All that said, I did not enjoy reading this, maybe because I didn't devote enough of a stretch of time solely to it and it will probably be some time before I tackle the remaining Stegners on my shelves.
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LibraryThing member Copperskye
The story of Bo Mason, a man “haunted by the dream of quick wealth and isn’t quite unscrupulous enough to make his dream come true…he is a gambler who isn’t quite gambler enough, who has a streak of penuriousness in him, a kind of dull Dutch caution, so that he gambles with one hand and
In many ways it reminded me of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. It is a grand and glorious family saga full of dreams and heartache and Bruce’s search for family and home.
“He has a notion where home would turn out to be, for himself as for his father – over the next range, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, that place of impossible loveliness that had pulled the whole nation westward, the place where the fat land sweated up wealth and the heavens dropped lemonade…”.
The story also has autobiographical aspects – many of the situations and tragedies were Stegner’s own - which add an additional layer to the story.
5 big enthusiastic stars
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holds back a stake with the other”. His wife Elsa, and their two sons, Chet and Bruce, live an itinerant life of poverty as Bo chases schemes and dreams of a big score. The word hardscrabble would hardly describe their life.In many ways it reminded me of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. It is a grand and glorious family saga full of dreams and heartache and Bruce’s search for family and home.
“He has a notion where home would turn out to be, for himself as for his father – over the next range, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, that place of impossible loveliness that had pulled the whole nation westward, the place where the fat land sweated up wealth and the heavens dropped lemonade…”.
The story also has autobiographical aspects – many of the situations and tragedies were Stegner’s own - which add an additional layer to the story.
5 big enthusiastic stars
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LibraryThing member HaroldTitus
This book moved me to tears. Perhaps that is because I am in my seventies and have lived and witnessed much of what Wallace Stegner writes about. Perhaps it is because I have come to understand how complex human beings are and how easily they can bring injury and hardship upon the people they
The novel begins in the year 1905 in Minnesota and ends in Utah in the 1930s. Its central character is Harry “Bo” Mason, a physically powerful, aggressive person who left his parents’ home at the age of fourteen, survived working hard-labor odd jobs, is self-reliant, fiercely stubborn, and, given to “chasing dreams of acquiring quick wealth,” unrealistically ambitious. According to his son Bruce he is “a self-centered and dominating egotist who insists on submission from his family and yet at the same time is completely dependent on his wife.” He is conscious of the great injury he inflicts on his family and suffers much remorse, but he does not change.
Early in the story Bo’s decision to become a bootlegger is challenged by his wife Elsa. “For a moment he stood, almost hating her, hating the way she and the kids hung on him and held him back, loaded him with responsibilities and then hamstrung him when he tried to do anything.”
“I made up my mind that I was your wife and I’d stay your wife, no matter what,” Elsa responds. “I never asked for more than we had. I’d have been satisfied with just a bare living, if we could only keep what we’ve had up here. So don’t ever say you did this for me or them.”
Not weak, Elsa is soft in that she is unselfish, accepting, loving. Late in the novel she counsels Bruce. “Some day you’ll learn that you can’t have people exactly the way you want them and that a little understanding is all you need to make most people seem halfway decent.” In many ways Bo is a sympathetic character. I wanted him to succeed in each of his risky endeavors. Nevertheless, Elsa is whom I cherished and respected.
Essential to the story is how Chet and Bruce, the two sons, affected by the characteristics and actions of their parents, develop.
I was fascinated with what Stegner does with the theme of risk-taking and reward, an issue every person is confronted with as an adult. How much is a person willing to risk to achieve an ambitious goal? How much less is that person willing to accept? What makes a person happy? Stegner explores as well the importance of heredity: how much a person is shaped by past generations. Reflecting upon his parents and then himself, Bruce decides: “Perhaps it took several generations to make a man, … several combinations and re-creations of his mother’s gentleness and resilience, his father’s enormous energy and appetite for the new, a subtle blending of masculine and feminine, selfish and selfless, stubborn and yielding, before a proper man could be fashioned.”
“The Big Rock Candy Mountain” is a remarkable book.
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love.The novel begins in the year 1905 in Minnesota and ends in Utah in the 1930s. Its central character is Harry “Bo” Mason, a physically powerful, aggressive person who left his parents’ home at the age of fourteen, survived working hard-labor odd jobs, is self-reliant, fiercely stubborn, and, given to “chasing dreams of acquiring quick wealth,” unrealistically ambitious. According to his son Bruce he is “a self-centered and dominating egotist who insists on submission from his family and yet at the same time is completely dependent on his wife.” He is conscious of the great injury he inflicts on his family and suffers much remorse, but he does not change.
Early in the story Bo’s decision to become a bootlegger is challenged by his wife Elsa. “For a moment he stood, almost hating her, hating the way she and the kids hung on him and held him back, loaded him with responsibilities and then hamstrung him when he tried to do anything.”
“I made up my mind that I was your wife and I’d stay your wife, no matter what,” Elsa responds. “I never asked for more than we had. I’d have been satisfied with just a bare living, if we could only keep what we’ve had up here. So don’t ever say you did this for me or them.”
Not weak, Elsa is soft in that she is unselfish, accepting, loving. Late in the novel she counsels Bruce. “Some day you’ll learn that you can’t have people exactly the way you want them and that a little understanding is all you need to make most people seem halfway decent.” In many ways Bo is a sympathetic character. I wanted him to succeed in each of his risky endeavors. Nevertheless, Elsa is whom I cherished and respected.
Essential to the story is how Chet and Bruce, the two sons, affected by the characteristics and actions of their parents, develop.
I was fascinated with what Stegner does with the theme of risk-taking and reward, an issue every person is confronted with as an adult. How much is a person willing to risk to achieve an ambitious goal? How much less is that person willing to accept? What makes a person happy? Stegner explores as well the importance of heredity: how much a person is shaped by past generations. Reflecting upon his parents and then himself, Bruce decides: “Perhaps it took several generations to make a man, … several combinations and re-creations of his mother’s gentleness and resilience, his father’s enormous energy and appetite for the new, a subtle blending of masculine and feminine, selfish and selfless, stubborn and yielding, before a proper man could be fashioned.”
“The Big Rock Candy Mountain” is a remarkable book.
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LibraryThing member nemoman
This is Stegner's coming-of-age , semi-autobiographical novel. Son of a "boomer", the protagonist constantly moves throughout the intermountain American West, driven by an alcoholic father always looking for the "main chance" and always fated to go bust. Solaced by an understanding mother, he
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strives to satisfy his love for books in an intellectually sterile environment. this book rivals "Angle Of Repose" as Stegner's best fiction and ranks among the top ten novels written in the twentieth century. Show Less
LibraryThing member beata
If anything bad can happen to that poor family, it will in that book, you can be assured.
LibraryThing member kemilyh1988
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. Will probably read all of Stegner now. Still the best book I've read in 2016. Coming of age, western expansion, family drama, bootlegging, what is not to love?
LibraryThing member hemlokgang
An iconic novel, akin to "Grapes of Wrath", "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is emblematic of the shortfalls of the American dream. This is a sweeping novel, set in the western United States, as the sense of endless possibility is co-mingling with the end of the frontier mentality. One family, whose
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father is restless and driven to hit the peak of the big rock candy mountain, lives in 100 homes in 30 years. The rootlessness and it's impacts are the central theme of the novel. Frustration, tolerance, shame, loyalty, and the anger engendered by the pattern of the family's existence are described in wonderful prose. I was very moved, and reminded of what really matters in life! Magnificent novel!_ Show Less
LibraryThing member idiotgirl
Audible. I enjoyed this book. Some of the passages are a bit overwrought, straining for extra meaning and beauty. But I appreciated the ambition of the book and often it works. I'm moved by understanding many of the settings and backstory. Would recommend.
LibraryThing member TimBazzett
Well worth the time it takes to read - Excellent! I think I first tried to read BRCM more than 20 years ago, but set it aside for something shorter and more immediate. Maybe I just needed the extra years under my belt to fully appreciate Stegner's accomplishment with this book. Four major
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characters, all members of the same family, are fully fleshed out and just as human as fictional characters get. Bo and Elsa Mason and their two sons, Chet and Bruce, form a kind of microcosm of American society during the hard times that stretched from the turn of the century into the Depression. And there are no real "bad guys" in this story; only people who are victims of their own appetites and dreams, and of their own heritage and hardscrabble surroundings. This is still a powerful story, even after 65 years. I recommend it highly. Show Less
LibraryThing member dele2451
The heartwrenching saga of a young, poor family trying to survive the Depression/Prohibition era by bootlegging. The description of the hardships, continuous uprooting and frustrating disappointments of this classic down-on-their-luck family will probably leave you a bit blue, but the descriptions
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of the midwestern, western and Northwest territories make it worthwhile. Fellow Utahns will find a lot of accurate references to local landmarks. A good read, but not nearly as happy as the title implies. Show Less
LibraryThing member daisyq
Great read. I do like a good multi-generational family saga, and this is very well written.
The characters were all brilliantly drawn. While it's semi-autobiographical, Stegner manages to get inside the actions and motivations of all the key family members, their relationships, and how they affect
There's some really interesting settings and set pieces in this; the family moves around a lot. I found their time in Canada and the impact of the post-WWI flu epidemic particularly fascinating.
The characters were all brilliantly drawn. While it's semi-autobiographical, Stegner manages to get inside the actions and motivations of all the key family members, their relationships, and how they affect
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each other. He makes it easy to understand and care about them, even at their worst moments. Even though it's pretty clear from the outset (or reading the blurb) that Bo's many schemes are doomed, I still wanted him to succeed and never entirely lost sympathy with him.There's some really interesting settings and set pieces in this; the family moves around a lot. I found their time in Canada and the impact of the post-WWI flu epidemic particularly fascinating.
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LibraryThing member Benedict8
This is a superbly written, powerfully emotional story about a man and a woman who begin their lives at the beginning of the last century. They are an unlikely couple. She is a decent, caring woman, and her new husband is a bad-tempered man who is looking for the “big rock candy mountain,” yet
The emotional punch here is so strong I had to put the ‘pod down for a day a couple of times just so I could go on with it.
I have just finished Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I wonder if both these novels deserve to be called masterpieces. The writing in each, but particularly with Big Rock, is most clearly perfect “chiseled” English with every word meaning something.
The narration is superb and, as I sometimes remark, it makes those of us who listen to books happy we have found this medium.
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they both love and support each other through their lives.The emotional punch here is so strong I had to put the ‘pod down for a day a couple of times just so I could go on with it.
I have just finished Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I wonder if both these novels deserve to be called masterpieces. The writing in each, but particularly with Big Rock, is most clearly perfect “chiseled” English with every word meaning something.
The narration is superb and, as I sometimes remark, it makes those of us who listen to books happy we have found this medium.
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LibraryThing member oldblack
I reckon this is an excellent novel. I only come to that conclusion at the end, like I do with just about all of Stegner's work. He has a great ability to create stories which build up a complete and satisfying picture. There were times early on in the work when I felt that the book could have done
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with a little shortening, but you only get to understand a person's life by seeing the whole of it, in appropriate balance to give you the true picture. It's a story about a man, his wife and their two boys, in which the man is a lousy husband and father, but the wife is committed to the relationship, to her great cost. In the end we see the parents mostly through the eyes of the more sensitive son who is in his 20s. A few too many parallels with my own life to allow me to be entirely comfortable, but the truth does hurt, doesn't it? Show Less
LibraryThing member ginger.hewitt
I really enjoyed the physical descriptions of Northwest United States and parts of Canada. Overall, a pleasant yet tragic story.
LibraryThing member banjo123
“There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.”
I loved this
I loved this
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semi-autobiographical novel. It matches the song referenced in the title; sweet and hard, full of hope and despair. There is a strong sense of place, and also of rootlessness, as the family moves from community to community, in search of the never-quite-realizable American dream. The descriptions of landscape and nature are beautiful. The characters are fully realized, and even Bo, the thoughtless husband and abusive father, seems like someone you might run into, maybe on a road trip, when you stopped at a bar in some small town looking for a cold drink. And he's awful, on the one hand, but you might actually like him, or at least feel sorry for him. Show Less
LibraryThing member untraveller
This book is as close to the great American novel as any that I have read. Kept me glued to the covers day after day as I traveled thru Peru (of all places!). I wish the ending had been a bit cleaner, however. I felt that, much like The Angle of Repose, the ending of the book was rush and a bit too
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philosophical....let the reader do the philosophizing! Easily, the two best characters in the book were Bo and Elsa....the kids were two pieces of work. A result of the parents? Maybe, but I had absolutely no sympathy for crybaby Bruce or his rock stubborn brother. Whatever the faults of the parents, and I'm not so sure I would classify them that way, at least they had the gumption to motivate themselves to live their lives....something the sons couldn't seem to do. And, personally, for the times, I see nothing wrong with Bo's lifestyle, that "home" business of Elsa'a and Bruce's is a bit to claustrophobic for me.... Show Less
LibraryThing member tjsjohanna
Beautifully written and epic-like in its scope, this novel traces the failure of a family, brought down by the father's unfailing pursuit of easy money. The portrayals of Bo, Elsa, and their two sons are so fully developed and show such a broad range of emotion and experience. Mr. Stegner manages
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the difficult task of showing just how destructive Bo is, and yet also how charismatic and attractive he could be. Show Less
LibraryThing member stevesmits
One of Stegner’s early works, The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a story of a family in America’s west in the early years of the 20th century. As much as a story of the Mason family it is a story of the west and the fading opportunities for success that ambition and hard work could not overcome.
At
Bo is determined to “make his pile” of money and jumps from place to place and job to job throughout the story. He opens a hotel that is soon crippled by the economic depression of 1907. The family moves to Seattle as a jumping off locale for Bo’s plan to join the gold rush in Alaska, but this doesn’t work out and Bo operates a diner while his family lives in a tent. After a crisis of violence involving Bo’s disciplining his young son Bruce the family separates and Bo moves to Canada to operate a boarding dormitory for railway workers. The family is reconciled and Bo tries his luck at wheat farming in Saskatchewan when prices are at their peak, but drought conditions bring the venture to ruin. Bo is always scheming for the means to get rich and, while hard working, his bad luck and poor choices thwart him.
Bo and Elsa have two children. Chet, the oldest, is athletic and bold; Bruce is sensitive and timid. Bo tries to toughen up Bruce and an incident of discipline in Seattle causes Elsa to flee to her family, where later Bo joins them after his dormitory work fails. Bo strikes out for Canada for a wheat farm, but when that collapses he decides to become a bootlegger by running between Montana and Saskatchewan, at the time a dry province. Bo’s illegal smuggling bothers Elsa greatly, but she goes along as Bo is beginning to have some success. Elsa is a kind for forbearing person who is loyal to Bo and, as a result, is constantly swept along in his grandiose plans. After a falling out with local gangsters Bo relocates the family to Salt Lake City where he resumes his bootlegging. The family is constantly on the move from house to house and Elsa longs for stability and roots, something that she will never see in her life with Bo.
The story shifts perspectives between the members of the family; told from the view of each of them. Bruce is a thoughtful and introspective child; he becomes an excellent student. Chet is a star athlete, something his father takes great pride in. Chet has fallen in love with a local girl who is four years older than him and, partly in reaction to growing tensions with Bo at home, they elope. The families intercede and the marriage is annulled, but later Chet remarries Laura. Chet is struggling to find his way in work and one can see that he will never succeed. In contrast, Bruce is college bound and leaves the family to attend college in Minnesota and then law school. It becomes clear that Chet and Bruce are becoming increasingly disaffected from Bo and see him as selfish and self-centered. Chet suddenly dies of pneumonia.
Elsa supports Bo but reluctantly and always with the wish he’d abandon the unsavory work of peddling liquor. The family members are ashamed of Bo’s business and constantly concerned that he will bring discredit on them.
Bo decides finally to drop the bootlegging although he’s done quite well and takes an interest in a gambling casino in Reno where, though a seamly business, it is legal. He again gets the itch to try something else and invests in a mining venture that, predictably, goes sour. Elsa has become ill with cancer. Bo does not support her well during her illness and Bruce takes a leave from his law studies to care for her. Bo’s distance and lack of compassion for Elsa causes Bruce’s resentment of his father to become ever greater.
Elsa dies a lingering death with Bruce providing most of the care giving while his father loiters on the periphery. The break between Bruce and Bo becomes complete and Bruce writes Bo out of his live completely.
Bo deteriorates more and more as his finances decline. In the end he commits murder and suicide bringing to a shameful end his life of failure.
Bo is a tragic character whose ambition clouds his judgment and ultimately estranges him from his family. Elsa remains loyal to Bo but yearns for a life of stability and respect and can never persuade to settle down; he’s always captive to a lofty vision of making it big and doesn’t see the needs of his family for a meaningful life as a family.
The story also tells of the changing milieu of the far west where the promise of unlimited opportunities for success for those who work hard are vanishing, even if they were mostly likely always ephemeral. Bo could never see that striving for a big killing put him at odds with economic forces that he could not overcome. He was blind to the real depths of success and contentment that his family offered him, but he continually foreswore.
At
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age 18 Elsa Norgaard sets out alone from her home looking for respite from her unhappy life in Minnesota. Her widowed father has married a girlhood friend of Elsa and life in the household becomes intolerable. She has no certain plan other than to live with an uncle in Hardanger, North Dakota. She meets Harry “Bo” Mason, a charming and energetic young man who has also left his roots and drifted through places and jobs before settling in Hardanger where he runs a billiards parlor. Bo courts Elsa and they marry despite her family’s suspicions of his worthiness.Bo is determined to “make his pile” of money and jumps from place to place and job to job throughout the story. He opens a hotel that is soon crippled by the economic depression of 1907. The family moves to Seattle as a jumping off locale for Bo’s plan to join the gold rush in Alaska, but this doesn’t work out and Bo operates a diner while his family lives in a tent. After a crisis of violence involving Bo’s disciplining his young son Bruce the family separates and Bo moves to Canada to operate a boarding dormitory for railway workers. The family is reconciled and Bo tries his luck at wheat farming in Saskatchewan when prices are at their peak, but drought conditions bring the venture to ruin. Bo is always scheming for the means to get rich and, while hard working, his bad luck and poor choices thwart him.
Bo and Elsa have two children. Chet, the oldest, is athletic and bold; Bruce is sensitive and timid. Bo tries to toughen up Bruce and an incident of discipline in Seattle causes Elsa to flee to her family, where later Bo joins them after his dormitory work fails. Bo strikes out for Canada for a wheat farm, but when that collapses he decides to become a bootlegger by running between Montana and Saskatchewan, at the time a dry province. Bo’s illegal smuggling bothers Elsa greatly, but she goes along as Bo is beginning to have some success. Elsa is a kind for forbearing person who is loyal to Bo and, as a result, is constantly swept along in his grandiose plans. After a falling out with local gangsters Bo relocates the family to Salt Lake City where he resumes his bootlegging. The family is constantly on the move from house to house and Elsa longs for stability and roots, something that she will never see in her life with Bo.
The story shifts perspectives between the members of the family; told from the view of each of them. Bruce is a thoughtful and introspective child; he becomes an excellent student. Chet is a star athlete, something his father takes great pride in. Chet has fallen in love with a local girl who is four years older than him and, partly in reaction to growing tensions with Bo at home, they elope. The families intercede and the marriage is annulled, but later Chet remarries Laura. Chet is struggling to find his way in work and one can see that he will never succeed. In contrast, Bruce is college bound and leaves the family to attend college in Minnesota and then law school. It becomes clear that Chet and Bruce are becoming increasingly disaffected from Bo and see him as selfish and self-centered. Chet suddenly dies of pneumonia.
Elsa supports Bo but reluctantly and always with the wish he’d abandon the unsavory work of peddling liquor. The family members are ashamed of Bo’s business and constantly concerned that he will bring discredit on them.
Bo decides finally to drop the bootlegging although he’s done quite well and takes an interest in a gambling casino in Reno where, though a seamly business, it is legal. He again gets the itch to try something else and invests in a mining venture that, predictably, goes sour. Elsa has become ill with cancer. Bo does not support her well during her illness and Bruce takes a leave from his law studies to care for her. Bo’s distance and lack of compassion for Elsa causes Bruce’s resentment of his father to become ever greater.
Elsa dies a lingering death with Bruce providing most of the care giving while his father loiters on the periphery. The break between Bruce and Bo becomes complete and Bruce writes Bo out of his live completely.
Bo deteriorates more and more as his finances decline. In the end he commits murder and suicide bringing to a shameful end his life of failure.
Bo is a tragic character whose ambition clouds his judgment and ultimately estranges him from his family. Elsa remains loyal to Bo but yearns for a life of stability and respect and can never persuade to settle down; he’s always captive to a lofty vision of making it big and doesn’t see the needs of his family for a meaningful life as a family.
The story also tells of the changing milieu of the far west where the promise of unlimited opportunities for success for those who work hard are vanishing, even if they were mostly likely always ephemeral. Bo could never see that striving for a big killing put him at odds with economic forces that he could not overcome. He was blind to the real depths of success and contentment that his family offered him, but he continually foreswore.
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LibraryThing member charlie68
A sprawling narrative that taps into the greatness of the American ideal and its failings.
LibraryThing member judithrs
The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Wallace Stegner. 1943. The quarantine has been a blessing in that I am reading from my TBR bookcase, and this is another gem! I have loved every book I have read by Stegner. Big Rock Candy Mountain is a family saga based partially on Stegner’s own family. Bo Mason is
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a larger-than-life husband and father who took his wife and sons all over the western US and Canada for dreams, deals, and jobs that were always going to make him rich but never did. These schemes were rarely legal, and Elsa’s dreams of a permanent home and respectability were never realized; but she continued to follow him and never quit loving him, much to the dismay of his sons. Stegner’s insights into family life, marriage in particular, always amaze me. The casual cruelty to both people and animals is upsetting so this book isn’t for everyone. Show Less
LibraryThing member martitia
Stegner's semi-autobiographical novel is a masterpiece of fiction about the men and women who settled the American West. It is character-driven fiction with a strong sense of place. The characters are the children of pioneers who have inherited their their ancestors drive for home and opportunity
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and as well as their violence and resilience. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lapsus16
This book describes a family but I learned a long way about my own life. I am not American, never lived in Dakotas didn't live during prohibition, don't have a brother and yet!
LibraryThing member Castlelass
Published in 1943, this classic family saga tells the story of the Masons – Harry (called Bo), Elsa, Chet, and Bruce – over the course of approximately thirty years. It begins in 1905, when Elsa leaves her home in Minnesota and travels to North Dakota, where she meets Bo. They fall in love,
It is traditional in structure and sweeping in scope, covering a wide swath of the Northwestern US and Canada – California, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, Saskatchewan, Idaho, Utah, and the Dakotas. Stegner writes of mountains, prairies, droughts, floods, blizzards, and other natural elements faced by people living on the frontier. The plot is episodic in nature. The prose is stellar, immersing the reader into a time and place. There is no single protagonist. The plot is driven forward by Bo’s restless wanderings. Each family member is featured in several chapters.
The characters are convincing. I am sure many of us are familiar with a person like Bo, who constantly seeks the golden opportunity that lies just over the next hill. Bo is charismatic and temperamental. His temper flares when things do not go his way, which leads to conflicts with Chet and Bruce. In contrast, Elsa yearns for stability, a place to call home, and the peaceful routines of family life. She could easily live without riches. Elsa suffers in silence and tries her best to provide a stable, loving environment for her sons.
Bo pursues his dreams and does not consider the impact on his family. His actions lead his family members to both love and loathe him. He seems born out of sync with frontier expansion and has just missed the biggest boom times. Bo’s time (and the plot) includes the WWI, 1918 Influenza, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.
“Harry Mason was a child and a man. Whatever he did, any time, he was a completely masculine being…In an earlier time, under other circumstances, he might have become something the nation would have elected to honor, but he would have been no different. He would always have been an undeveloped human being, an immature social animal, and the further the nation goes the less room there is for that kind of man.”
This book requires a significant commitment of time – it is long and densely written. It is a book I am likely to remember for a long time.
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marry, and two sons are born. The family frequently moves in search of Bo’s latest get-rich-quick scheme. Bo’s schemes sometimes rely on illegal activities, such as rumrunning during Prohibition, much to the dismay of the rest of the family.It is traditional in structure and sweeping in scope, covering a wide swath of the Northwestern US and Canada – California, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, Saskatchewan, Idaho, Utah, and the Dakotas. Stegner writes of mountains, prairies, droughts, floods, blizzards, and other natural elements faced by people living on the frontier. The plot is episodic in nature. The prose is stellar, immersing the reader into a time and place. There is no single protagonist. The plot is driven forward by Bo’s restless wanderings. Each family member is featured in several chapters.
The characters are convincing. I am sure many of us are familiar with a person like Bo, who constantly seeks the golden opportunity that lies just over the next hill. Bo is charismatic and temperamental. His temper flares when things do not go his way, which leads to conflicts with Chet and Bruce. In contrast, Elsa yearns for stability, a place to call home, and the peaceful routines of family life. She could easily live without riches. Elsa suffers in silence and tries her best to provide a stable, loving environment for her sons.
Bo pursues his dreams and does not consider the impact on his family. His actions lead his family members to both love and loathe him. He seems born out of sync with frontier expansion and has just missed the biggest boom times. Bo’s time (and the plot) includes the WWI, 1918 Influenza, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.
“Harry Mason was a child and a man. Whatever he did, any time, he was a completely masculine being…In an earlier time, under other circumstances, he might have become something the nation would have elected to honor, but he would have been no different. He would always have been an undeveloped human being, an immature social animal, and the further the nation goes the less room there is for that kind of man.”
This book requires a significant commitment of time – it is long and densely written. It is a book I am likely to remember for a long time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiley
One of my favorite of Stegner's fictions. His "Grapes of Wrath" novel of the transient modern west. Also a compelling saga of the toll of years on a family and what that family becomes.
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1943
Physical description
563 p.; 20 cm
ISBN
0140139397 / 9780140139396