Margaret and Alec Stuart have a happy marriage despite Alec`s reliance on the bottle. When Margaret`s sister comes to stay with them and falls in love with their thriving Iowa farm, things change, and Margaret finds herself tested by a cruel series of events. Stegner wrote REMEMBERING LAUGHTER in response to a 1936 Little, Brown contest offering $2500 for an original novelette. He won the contest with this story, based on a reminiscence by his wife of her two aunts back in Iowa. It also owes a debt to Edith Wharton`s ETHAN FROME. This was Stegner`s first published work.