Angle of Repose is a 1971 novel by Wallace Stegner about a wheelchair-using historian, Lyman Ward, who has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents.

Stegner's use of substantial passages from Foote's actual letters as the correspondence of his fictional character Susan Burling Ward was and remains controversial among some scholars.

It seems to describe the loose wandering of the Ward family as they try to carve out a civilized existence in the West and, Susan hopes, to return to the East as successes.

That direction is provided by finding out about and trying to understand his grandparents..."[6] Aside from his scholarly work which consists of composing a biography from his grandmother's letters, published writings, and newspaper clippings, Ward spends his time on daily exercise, conversing with his summer secretary (Ada's daughter Shelly Rasmussen), and watching baseball with the Hawkes family.

[7] According to Jackson J. Benson, the character of Lyman Ward was modeled after Stegner's dissertation adviser at the University of Iowa, Norman Foerster, who also lost the use of his legs late in life due to disease.

[8] In her youth, Susan Burling (the character based on Mary Hallock Foote) was a promising writer and artist connected with some of the leading lights in New York culture.

Based on Mary's husband Arthur De Wint Foote, Oliver is a bright, straightforward, honest man who has focused on supporting the family he loves.

A "Who's Who" of American geologists and other Western individuals of the late 19th century make their appearance, including John Wesley Powell, Clarence King, Samuel Franklin Emmons, Henry Janin, and Rossiter W. Raymond.

Upon publication, Angle of Repose was praised nearly unanimously by critics for being both "...the most ambitious and deeply realized of [Stegner's] works"[9] and on a larger scale, "...a major piece of literature".