Which novel by Wallace Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972?

Wallace Stegner’s novel Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972.

Published in 1971, the novel follows Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-using historian who investigates the lives of his grandparents, Oliver and Susan Ward, in the American West of the late 19th century. Its story moves through places including California, Colorado, Idaho, and Mexico, blending family drama with Western history.

Stegner drew heavily on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, a real writer and illustrator whose life and correspondence inspired the character Susan Burling Ward. That use of archival material later became controversial because passages from Foote’s letters were incorporated into the novel. The title refers to an engineering term describing the stable slope at which loose earth settles.

The other choices are also Stegner novels, which makes this a particularly plausible mix-up. The Spectator Bird won the National Book Award in 1977, while Crossing to Safety appeared in 1987.