Wallace Stegner (1909 1993) was born near Lake Mills, Iowa, and grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada; Great Falls, Montana; and Salt Lake City. He spent nearly twenty years in Salt Lake, from 1921 to 1937, and attended East High School and the University of Utah. He later taught at the University of Wisconsin, Harvard, and Stanford.
As he was later to say in his essay 'At Home in the Fields of the Lord, ' he eventually realized that, if he had to have a hometown, it was Salt Lake City. He came to use the 'City of the Saints' for settings in three novels: The Big Rock Candy Mountain,...