The Big Rock Candy Mountain focuses on the ending of the western frontier. Through the character of Bo Mason, the novel shows what happened to a society of people whose temperaments were suited to a wide-open frontier, but who had to adapt to the constraints of a settled society. In an interview Stegner said, "People like Bo Mason ... grow up without history, and they live without history, without any sense of history. They're trapped in the present." This reflects Stegner's view of the American and Canadian Wests; each is without history — their people have to make their own history in the present. Bo Mason wanders about trying to escape from the need to create his own life, to make his own history.

His wife Elsa yearns to settle in one place, but she is tied to a wandering frontiersman. The story of Bo, Elsa, and...