The gathering of Zion: The story of the Mormon Trail

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner tells about a thousand-mile migration marked by hardship and sudden deathâ€”but unique in American history for its purpose, discipline, and solidarity. Other Bison Books by Wallace Stegner include Mormon Country, Recapitulation, Second Growth, and Women on the Wall.

The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail

History

Stegner, Wallace

Americas

McGraw=Hill

This is the story of the great Mormon trek in 1846-1847 from Nauvoo in Southern Illinois, over the Iowa plans, along the Platte River across Nebraska into Wyoming, and down from the mountains to a new Zion in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah - and the steady migration of tens of thousands of Mormons that followed for nearly a quarter of a century. An adventure of Old Testament proportions, marked by hardship, disease, and sudden death, the Mormon migration is distinguished from all other parts of the American movement westward by its discipline, order, and group solidarity. This detailed account-drawn from the carefully preserved diaries of the migrants themselves-begins in 1844 with the murder of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and ends with the driving of the Golden Spike joining the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways at Promontory, Utah, twenty-five years later. It is one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of the American West. Wallace Stegner is a distinguished novelist and short story writer, a professor of English, and formerly director of Stanford University's Creative Writing Program. His faction includes the Big Rock Candy Mountain, All the Little Live Things, and Angle of Repose. His books dealing with Western history are Mormon Country, the Hundredth Meridian, and the semi-autobiographical Wolf Willow.

The Gathering of Zion, The Story of the Mormon Trail

Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams Afterword by T. H. Watkins Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Crossing to Safety

Literature & Fiction

Penguin??Books

Chronicles the lifelong friendship between the Morgans, a young couple with talent and dreams but no prospects or connections, and the Langs, a wealthy couple generous enough to share their good fortune

Literary

Wallace Stegner weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and impressions, childhood remembrance and adult reflections in this unusual portrait of his boyhood. Set in Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where Stegner's family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920, Wolf Willow brings to life both the pioneer community and the magnificent landscape that surrounds it. This Twentieth-Century Classics edition includes a new introductory essay by Page Stegner.

Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier

Biographies & Memoirs

Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune—in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest.
Stegner portrays more than thirty years in the life of the Mason family in this masterful, harrwoing saga of people trying to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Contemporary American Fiction)

United States

Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.
A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.
"Elegant and entertaining . . . Every scene [is] adroitly staged and each effect precisely acomplished." —The Atlantic

The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction)

Joe Hill

Blending fact with fiction, Wallace Stegner retells the story of Joe Hill—the Wobbly bard who became the stuff of legend when, in 1915, he was executed for the alleged murder of a Salt Lake City businessman. Organizer, agitator, "Labor's Songster"—a rebel from the skin inwards, with an absolute faith in the One Big Union—Joe Hill fought tirelessly in the frequently violent battles between organized labor and industry. But though songs and stories still vaunt him, and his legend continues to inspire those who feel the injustices he fought against, Joe Hill may not have been a saintly crusader and may have been motivated by impulses darker than the search for justice.
Joe Hill is a full-bodied portrait of both the man and the myth: from his entrance into the short-lived Industrial Workers of the World union, the most militant organization in the history of American labor, to his trial, imprisonment, and final martyrdom. His famous last words: "Don't waste time mourning. Organize."
"A genuinely powerful novel of labor as it once was in the U.S." —San Francisco Chronicle.

These 31 stories span a literary career of more than 50 years and serve as a true testament to "one of America's most distinguished men of letters."--The Boston Globe. Here are tales of young love and older wisdom; of the order and consistency of the natural world; and of the chaos, contradictions and continuities of the human being.

Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner

Joe Allston, the retired literary agent of Stegner's National Book Award-winning novel, The Spectator Bird, returns in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga, and sex; and Marian Catlin, an attractive young woman whose otherworldly innocence is far more appealing—and far more dangerous.

All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction)

Penguin Publishing Group

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Books by Stegner, Wallace

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stegner, Wallace. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail

The Gathering of Zion, The Story of the Mormon Trail

Crossing to Safety

Crossing to Safety

Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier

The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Contemporary American Fiction)

The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction)

Joe Hill

Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner

All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction)