The Spectator Bird is a 1976 novel by Wallace Stegner. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1977, one of the two most prestigious literary awards in the United States. The book tells the story of retired literary agent Joe Allston, who receives a postcard from an old friend, a Danish countess named Astrid. Joe initially hides the postcard from his wife, Ruth. However, he soon reveals to her not only its existence but that of a diary Joe kept twenty years before, when Joe and Ruth met Astrid while visiting Denmark. The Allstons took the trip in the wake of the death of their only child, Curtis, with whom Joe fought constantly.