All the Little Live Things (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Wallace Stegner
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The early 1960’s
- Setting: The San Francisco Bay Area
- Principal Characters: Joe Allston, Marian Catlin, Jim Peck, Tom Weld, Julie LoPresti
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, Pregnancy, Cancer, Women, Death or dying, Generation gap, Life and death
- Locales: San Francisco, CA
The Novel
All the Little Live Things consists of seven chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. Set in the Bay Area of California, the novel plays out some of the generational conflicts of the 1960’s as a group of strong characters settle in wild, hilly country near San Francisco much like Los Altos Hills, where Wallace Stegner’s family lived for many years.
Joe Allston, a retired literary agent, and his wife Ruth have built a retirement home, where they hope to live quietly, mourning the recent death of their son, who drowned in the Southern California surf,...
[The entire page is 2057 words long]
