WOLF WILLOW A History, a Story and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier <i> by Wallace Stegner (Penguin: $8.95) </i>

Pulitzer Prize-winner Wallace Stegner blends the memories of his childhood on the Saskatchewa/Montana border with a history of the region and a fictionalized account of its wilder days. His affectionate portrait of small-town life in the early 20th Century provides a gentle counter to the more dispassionate historical sections. In a revealing chapter that traces the history of the later 19th Century in the Cypress Hills, he explains how the honest behavior of the Canadian Mounties made them a more effective peace-keeping force among the settlers, traders and Indians than those heroes of Hollywood Westerns, the U.S. Calvary. Typically, Stegner’s prose is fine-grained, evocative and beautifully polished.