IN `ANGLE OF REPOSE,' STEGNER LOOKS WEST.

Byline: Bernadette Murphy Special to the Daily News

The angle of repose - a geologic term indicating the slope at which a rolling stone will finally come to rest is a metaphor brilliantly used in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, written by Wallace Stegner in 1971, the third book to be examined on the ``StoryLines California'' public radio program. Weaving together a narrative of the past and present, Stegner's Western-set novel examines the angles of repose among his disparate characters, that point at which they finally come to a bruised acceptance of their lives as they actually are, as opposed to what they would wish them to be.

The present action of the story takes place in the 1960s, following Lyman Ward, a retired professor who is confined to a wheelchair after losing a leg to bone disease. Bitter at the betrayal of his wife, who left him for one of his physicians during his hospitalization, Lyman has returned to the home of his deceased grandparents in Grass Valley in order to research and write the story of his forebears' pioneering lives and, in the process, better understand his own.

Through his research, Lyman tells the intriguing tale of Susan Burling and Oliver Ward, two people highly unlike the other who nonetheless marry and move to the rugged West in pursuit of Oliver's career as a mining and irrigation engineer. Susan, who's been active in the genteel society of New York during the Edith Wharton era of the late 1800s, leaves her career as a writer and illustrator to follow her husband, waiting for the day he'll prove himself in his vocation so that they may move back to society.

Based on the real-life letters of Mary Hallock Foote, a noted frontier novelist and illustrator, the story is rich with the details of dreams gone astray and the need to hold onto even deceptive opportunities when that's all that's available.

Though Susan eventually resumes her writing and illustrating - in fact, providing the sole financial support for their young family through droughts of Oliver's career - she feels imprisoned by her husband's own unproductive dreams. Ultimately, the stress on the marriage is too great, forcing a downward spiral of loss and disloyalty. As Lyman researches his grandparents' lives, looking for that place at which they finally found peace with each other, he begins to find his own angle of repose.

``In many ways, this book is the linchpin of the whole (``StoryLines California'') series, because it's the first book we'll deal with as literature,'' said co-host David L. Ulin, explaining that of the three preceding books covered on the radio program, ``none were intended as literary fiction.''

Conversely, ``Angle of Repose'' was always intended, and indeed, succeeds on the level of literary art, Ulin said. ``It's beautifully written, beautifully structured - an exquisite work of literary art.'' Co-host Lynell George said that the book ``is all about understanding history, a weaving of the past with the present.'' Because the novel encapsulates an ``overview of immigrant experience that takes the reader up to Berkeley in the 1960s,'' the story's ``not just about the changing terrain of California but about the etching and passing down of history,'' she said.

Joining Ulin and George to discuss ``Angle of Repose'' and how it fits into the canon of California literature will be Jackson Benson, professor of literature at University of California, San Diego.