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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
Domestic violence and some confrontations across the novel's decades
Language
Some
Some period strong language
Sexual Content
Barely any
Brief adult content
Substance Use
Some
Significant alcohol use; Bo's bootlegging and drinking are central
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Profound psychological portrait of a family shaped by a father's unachievable dreams
What this book is about
The Mason family spends decades following Bo Mason — a bootlegger, gambler, and serial dreamer — across the American West as he chases his vision of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, a place where everything will finally work out. Stegner's semi-autobiographical 1943 novel is one of American fiction's great portraits of the itinerant West, brutal about masculine failure and tender about what the family survives.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Domestic violence
Heavy alcohol use
Very long (~560 pages)
Reader Verification
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