Much of the literary landscape of Wallace Stegner's prose is the literal landscape of the Rocky Mountain region that extends roughly from Colorado over to Utah and into Nevada, up to Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, and into parts of Canada. This area is "Stegner Country," and whether Stegner is writing about the American West directly in his essays or indirectly through his biographies, histories, novels, and short stories, he captures the reality of living within a land often obscured by myths and dreams. Stegner's realism delivers a sense of actual experience as it connects readers to the land and space known as the American West.

The Rocky Mountain West is not thematically connected to all of Stegner's works. Some are set in New England, while others shift away from the canyons, rivers, high plains, and even higher mountains of Stegner Country to tamer areas of California, as does...