Joe Downing

Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety is my favorite novel. Stegner, who is best known for hisPulitzer Prize-winning novel Angle of Repose, founded the creative writing program at Stanford University. Crossing to Safety is about two men who meet early in their academic careers. The men become close friends as, later, do their wives. The novel is about academic culture, politics, and the stresses associated with one’s first tenure-track job out of graduate school. In the end, the book chronicles how personal friendships endure despite professional setbacks. I grew up in Colorado; I strongly identify with how Stegner’s novels characterize the American West. Crossing to Safety is a beautiful book.