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Crossing To Safety - Book Review

February 21, 2005

A good friend, almost 80, a wise Christian woman who reads voraciously - recommended the American writer Wallace Stegner and his novel Crossing to Safety. A recommendation from this friend is good enough to get me reading.
Crossing to Safety is beautifully written. Stegner is a master of words and pulls you into his time and place. With large parts of the novel set in Vermont, Crossing to Safety is a New England novel. The characters have New England sensabilities and eccentricities. Set during the depression it follows two newly married couples through their academic lives, travels, and travails. Mostly, the book is about marriage and friendship.
Stegner deals with the difficult and prickly parts of our personality. The prickles come out to stab and bother at the most ordinary times. Friends overlook the prickles, marriages develop tough (but not calloused) skin. Sorrow and pain occasionally poke through.
Read this book and you will see yourself in one of the four characters. You'll gain insight into your friendships and your marriages. You will feel a new tendernesss towards those who do not always meet our standards.