"Wallace Stegner: Dean Of Western Writers" with author Alex Beam

Nationally acclaimed author and journalist Alex Beam joins marketing specialist Beth Brumer-Reeve to talk about his new biography, Wallace Stegner: Dean Of Western Writers. 

Stegner had a prolific career that spanned half a century, including fourteen novels and seventeen works of nonfiction. He won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 book Angle of Repose, which later became embroiled in accusations of plagiarism. 

Beam speaks to the controversy surrounding Stegner, his years growing up with a father who chased riches, and the sense of belonging he felt among the Mormons after his family moved to Salt Lake City in the 1920s.

Alex Beam has written two novels and seven works of nonfiction, two of them New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In 2014, he published American Crucifixion, a narrative history of the assassination of Joseph Smith, "an excellent book about the life and death of an utterly uncategorizable man," according to the Wall Street Journal.

A longtime columnist for The Boston Globe, Beam lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.