Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner

I read “Angle of Repose” on the recommendation of my mother. Although I found the novel to be interesting, I felt like an outsider observing the story. Since much of the plot is revealed through letters, you feel like it is a backwards glance. I will say it was a good history lesson in the old west, Idaho in particular. Much has been made about the mixing of the present day grandson’s life mixing with the historic account as a plus, but I found him distracting. After finishing, I read that Stegner based Sue on a real person and used her actual letters. That made sense, it was hard to imagine she was pure imagination. A good, but also odd, read.