While Stegner flourishes as a writer when developing his works against the western land of his adopted region, he evokes through all his essays, stories, histories, and novels a sense of place that defines the natural and human environment.
Stegner's own feel for the land and space of the American West springs from early childhood experiences that occurred during the travels of his family. George Stegner, Wallace's father, set the pace by keeping his family continually on the move. In many ways, Stegner's father embodied the rugged individualism and pioneer spirit that define one of Stegner's most memorable characters--Bo Mason, from the autobiographically informed The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943). Like Bo, George Stegner doggedly chased his dreams across the western landscape in the hope of making the land itself his road to riches. Neither Bo Mason nor George Stegner, however, could bend the land to his will.
Stegner was not born in the West but in the Midwestern town of Lake Mills, Iowa, on 18 February 1909. George Stegner, his wife Hilda Paulson Stegner, and their first son, Cecil, lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota, but Hilda Stegner gave birth to Wallace while the family was visiting her mother's Iowa farm.
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