Crossing to Safety - 09/03/2007

August was a good book month for me. I read...a lot. Seven books total. The last one to make the August cut was Wallace Stegner's "Crossing to Safety."

This book was given to me by one of David's aunts to read. It is the story of two couples, told through the eyes of one of the men, Larry. The story is told in the present time and also in flashbacks from his memories.

Larry and Sally are a very young, pregnant couple who move to Wisconsin for a teaching job Larry was fortunate to get at the tail end of the depression. They are poor but happy. Larry spends his time teaching and submitting his short stories to magazines in order to supplement their income. Then they meet Sid and Charity and their lives are changed. Not only is Sid extremely wealthy, Charity is a force of nature on her own. She commands attention, she wills her husband to be a success and will accept nothing but. At first, I thought her to be fantastic, but as the book continues, I don't find her very appealing. I find her mean, stubborn and I feel for the hen-pecked Sid. These two couples love each other immediately and we see their lives in bits of Larry's memories for the next 30 years or so.

It's a quiet book. There's no sex, no violence. There's no adultery, no crime. It reads like a beautiful memoir (but it's not). It is a peek into the lives of 4 people, two totally different couples, who were fortunate enough to be together.