SOURCE: “Angle of Repose and the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote: A Source Study,” in Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner, edited by Anthony Arthur, G. K. Hall & Co., 1982, pp. 184-209.

In the following essay, Walsh attempts to clarify to what extent Wallace Stegner borrowed material from Foote for his 1971 novel Angle of Repose and examines the ways in which Foote's actual life was distorted by its fictional representation in Stegner's book.

In Angle of Repose, Lyman Ward sits at his desk in Grass Valley, California, surrounded by the papers of his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, using the papers to write a kind of biography of Susan and her marriage to Oliver Ward. The papers include hundreds of letters Susan had written to her friend, Augusta, an unpublished reminiscence written late in Susan's life, copies of her published and unpublished essays, stories, novels, and illustrations, and numerous photographs of...