From Publishers Weekly
Stegner's love of unspoilt nature and of the American West shines forth in these 17 graceful essays. This book by the Pulitzer Prize and NBA winner is a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee for criticism. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Western Americana and literary history by the Pulitzer-winning novelist. Now 80, Stegner here reviews his life in part, the West as writers have written about it, its landscape and the ever-changing effect of humanity upon it, and so on. Stegner believes that the West is finally coming into its own as a literary entity distinct from what eastern critics have found in it. Even so, he warns, ``without a more developed and cohesive society than the West, in its short life and against all the handicaps of revolutionary change and dispersion, has been able to grow--and without a native audience for its native arts--there may come a time in a writer's career when the clutch of the imagination will no longer take hold on the materials that are most one's own.'' That sentence points up Stegner's strengths and flaws: It digs into his subject of change and fragility both in landscape and citizenry, but does so in a voice more academic than earthy. Ever in search of the loamy detail, one reads through this collection of recent magazine essays and introductions to Stegner's own and others' books and finds less appeal to the senses than the wise overview, rich in itself but not rich in words. The best essay by far is a sigh-heavy memoir of his mother, ``Letter, Much Too Late,'' written some 50 years after her death, with her breath and heartbeat moved into the reader's own chest. Stegner's friendships with writers such as Walter Van Tilburg Clark and Wendell Berry ring with praise, as do his comments on John Steinbeck, Norman Maclean, and George Stewart. And one feels deeply rewarded by Stegner's wisdom about population shifts, the five or six main types of landscape, and his words about conservation, deadly dams, and the death of the desert. Absolutely worthwhile, but highly charged only here and there. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From Book News, Inc.
The acclaimed writer (Angle of repose, Spectator bird, among other novels, stories, and nonfiction) records thoughts and impressions of his own and others' life and work. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Review
“No one has written more or better about the West, past and present, than Wallace Stegner.”—USA Today


Review
?No one has written more or better about the West, past and present, than Wallace Stegner.??USA Today


Book Description
Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs gathers together Wallace Stegner’s most important and memorable writings on the American West: its landscapes, diverse history, and shifting identity; its beauty, fragility, and power. With subjects ranging from the writer’s own “migrant childhood” to the need to protect what remains of the great western wilderness (which Stegner dubs “the geography of hope”) to poignant profiles of western writers such as John Steinbeck and Norman Maclean, this collection is a riveting testament to the power of place. At the same time it communicates vividly the sensibility and range of this most gifted of American writers, historians, and environmentalists.


From the Inside Flap
Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs gathers together Wallace Stegner’s most important and memorable writings on the American West: its landscapes, diverse history, and shifting identity; its beauty, fragility, and power. With subjects ranging from the writer’s own “migrant childhood” to the need to protect what remains of the great western wilderness (which Stegner dubs “the geography of hope”) to poignant profiles of western writers such as John Steinbeck and Norman Maclean, this collection is a riveting testament to the power of place. At the same time it communicates vividly the sensibility and range of this most gifted of American writers, historians, and environmentalists.


From the Back Cover
“No one has written more or better about the West, past and present, than Wallace Stegner.”—USA Today


About the Author
T. H. Watkins (1936–2000) was the first Wallace Stegner Dis-tinguished Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. Watkins wrote twenty-eight books on history, the environment, and nature, including Righteous Pilgrim: The Life of Harold Ickes, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Award.

ANNOTATION

Stegner's enchantment with the West and his ability to capture in words what the land has taught him, not only about nature but about the human condition, are beautifully united in this collection of 16 essays. Stegner introduces the reader to a western literary tradition as varied as the landscape itself.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs gathers together Wallace Stegner's most important and memorable writings on the American West: its landscapes, diverse history, and shifting identity: its beauty, fragility, and power. With subjects ranging from the writer's own "migrant childhood" to the need to protect what remains of the great western wilderness (which Stegner dubs "the geography of hope") to poignant profiles of western writers such as John Steinbeck and Norman Maclean, this collection is a riveting testament to the power of place. At the same time it communicates vividly the sensibility and range of this most gifted of American writers, historians, and environmentalists.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The American West is ``less a place than a process,'' asserts Stegner. In these 17 graceful essays, most previously published in magazines or books, the novelist explores the dynamic tension between the West as means of escape from irksome obligations and its underappreciated role as teacher of hard lessons of community and environmental conscience. A masterful stylist who captures the untamed energy of the West in every inflection, Stegner paints word pictures of the landscape full of dry clarity. He has ``Western migratoriness'' in his blood, as revealed by autobiographical sketches tracing his peripatetic childhood from an Iowa farm to North Dakota wheat towns to Washington logging camps. In a deeply moving confessional letter to his mother he measures his life against his unspoken promises to the woman who died 55 years earlier. His love of unspoilt nature and of the West shines forth. Author tour. (Apr.)

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