• The Big Rock Candy Mountain

  • By: Wallace Stegner
  • Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
  • Length: 25 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,719 ratings)

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The Big Rock Candy Mountain  By  cover art

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

By: Wallace Stegner
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
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Publisher's summary

Bo Mason, his wife, and his 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 his fortune in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running throughout the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest.

Based largely on his own childhood, Stegner has created a masterful, harrowing saga of a family trying to survive during the lean years of the early 20th century. It is the conflict between the hardscrabble existence and Bo's pursuit of the frontier myth and of the American dream that gives the book such resonance and power.

©1938 1940, 1942, 1943 by Wallace Stegner (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Stegner has felt the spell of mountain and prairie, of drought, flood, and blizzard....a harrowing saga." - ( New York Times)
"Stands out beautifully and unforgettably." ( New Yorker)

What listeners say about The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Average customer ratings
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one of my all-time favorites

This is one of my favorite novels and it translates exceptionally well to audiobook. Mark Bramhall is the perfect narrator for it and is terrific. I am shocked that the ratings for this aren't higher.

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Beautiful writing, fantastic story

I was nervous to get this book on audible being 25 hours long and what if I hated it.... THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING! Beautifully written, does not burn you out! The story makes you want to listen more. Definitely a must read!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Fabulous listen

This book is a terrific and typical Stegner book. The narrator is incredible.

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13 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant writer. Stories always touch his own life. Few reach his acute ear for language and the human psyche.

His life growing up with unforgettable father. Brother and mother. To the depth of his desire to love and live up to a father entranced with sudden wealth through rummy enterprise. Never can you guess what comes next.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Big Rock Family Saga

I enjoyed this book a lot. For some reson it reminded me of The Great Santini, which I read years ago and loved. I found the precarious balance between the mother and father facinating and all too common. However, It was easy to care about all these people. The story provided an interesting view of another time , and kept me engaged and entertaind for, um, how many hours was that?

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars

My favorite of Stegner's books

Have been on a Stegner kick lately, reading and rereading a fair number of his books, including the best known. This is a wonderful, varied, long story encompassing a difficult and interesting life from several perspectives and stages of life. Great performance by the narrator.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Quite an emotional punch

This is a superbly written, powerfully emotional story about a man and a woman who begin their lives at the beginning of the last century. They are an unlikely couple. She is a decent, caring woman, and her new husband is a bad-tempered man who is looking for the “big rock candy mountain,” yet they both love and support each other through their lives.

The emotional punch here is so strong I had to put the ‘pod down for a day a couple of times just so I could go on with it.

I have just finished Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I wonder if both these novels deserve to be called masterpieces. The writing in each, but particularly with Big Rock, is most clearly perfect “chiseled” English with every word meaning something.

The narration is superb and, as I sometimes remark, it makes those of us who listen to books happy we have found this medium.

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1 person found this helpful

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Absolutely spectacular - not to be missed

As a fervent reader/listener of anything science fiction/fantasy, this truly was a different choice for me.

So very hard to believe it was written in 1943. It is a timeless masterpiece. There's nothing about the story or the performance that needs to be changed.

Just get it and listen.

Elizabeth

#timeless #masterpiece #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

The Mason's West

This is a tough book to review because I was completely entranced by this book. I became very involved in the trials and triumphs of the Mason family. Still, I'm not sure who I would recommend this novel to. It's definitely a great piece of fiction, but I can't say I feel satisfied after reading it.

Unfortunately, I think that was Stegner's point - the unsatisfactory end of a family trying to take advantage of the American dream. How much should you gamble? Can you raise children while being an American pioneer? What is the modern definition of pioneering if the West is already settled? If Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her Little House on the Prairie in the early 1900s...would it seem as delightfully innocent?

I definitely think Stegner's voice is an important one in American literature. In the future, I'd read another one of his novels.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Get it.

The narration is incredible. The characters are well defined. An emotional (highs and lows) and tragic story.

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