One biography each year is awarded a Pulitzer Prize, but these character studies wouldn’t count – each is a Pulitzer-winning work of fiction, with portions based on one person’s real life story.
Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
Wallace Stegner’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.