Book Club Meeting: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This semi-autobiographical novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner, originally published in 1987, explores the mysteries of friendship. It traces the bond that develops between couples Charity and Sid Lang and Sally and Larry Morgan from their first meeting in 1937, through their final get-together in 1972.

As Heller McAlpin wrote in a 2012 critique for Barnes & Noble Review: “Achingly poignant and nostalgia-steeped,Crossing to Safety is about a close friendship between two couples that spans some forty years, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do them part. Taking its title from a line from Robert Frost’s poem, ‘I Could Give All to Time,’ the novel’s concerns are the inexorable passage of time and inevitable loss, but also what one holds onto — ‘The things forbidden that while the Customs slept I have crossed to Safety with’ – most notably, memories (both heartwarming and difficult), and love.”