Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West

The American West is ``less a place than a process,'' asserts Stegner. In these 17 graceful essays, most previously published in magazines or books, the novelist explores the dynamic tension between the West as means of escape from irksome obligations and its underappreciated role as teacher of hard lessons of community and environmental conscience. A masterful stylist who captures the untamed energy of the West in every inflection, Stegner paints word pictures of the landscape full of dry clarity. He has ``Western migratoriness'' in his blood, as revealed by autobiographical sketches tracing his peripatetic childhood from an Iowa farm to North Dakota wheat towns to Washington logging camps. In a deeply moving confessional letter to his mother he measures his life against his unspoken promises to the woman who died 55 years earlier. His love of unspoilt nature and of the West shines forth. Author tour. (Apr.)