Literary agent Joe Allston is now retired and just killing time until time gets around to killing him. His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.

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

Sabrina Castro, an attractive woman with a strong New England heritage, is married to a wealthy, older California physician who no longer fulfils her dreams. An almost accidental misstep leads her down the slow descent of moral disintegration, until there is no place for her to go but up and out.

Wallace Stegner's boyhood was spent on the beautiful and remote frontier of the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where his family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920. In a recollection of his years there, Stegner applies childhood remembrances and adult reflection to create an enduring portrait of pioneer life.

A collection of 31 short stories from one of America's master storytellers. Here are tales of young love and older wisdom, of the order and consistency of the natural world and the chaos, contradictions and continuities of the human being.

An intimate portrait of a man confronting his life's experiences in light of his past.

Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents.