In an extraordinary tale of love and forgiveness, Mark Spragg brings us this novel of a complex, prodigal homecoming.
Jean Gilkyson has a history of choosing the wrong men. After yet another night of argument turned to violence with her boyfriend, Roy, Jean knows it's time to leave—if not for herself, then for her ten-year-old daughter, Griff. But the only place they can afford to go is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's family is dead and her deceased husband's father Einar wishes Jean was too.
Jean's
estranged father-in-law, Einar, still blames her for the death of his
son. Though Einar isn’t glad to see either of them, Griff falls in love
with his sprawling ranch and quiet way of life, as she slowly gets to
know his crippled old friend Mitch, the cats that lurk in the barn at
milking time, and finally the grandfather she had lost for so many
years. An emotionally charged story of hard-won friendship and
reconciliation, An Unfinished Life shows a novelist of extraordinary talents in the fullness of his powers.
Reviews
"Ever since I became the books editor at The Kansas City Star in March 2000, folks have been asking me to recommend a reading experience as clean and sharp as Kent Haruf's Plainsong. . . . Finally, I have an answer. His name is Mark Spragg, his new novel is An Unfinished Life." –John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star
"Spragg
writes in the man's man literary school of Hemingway and Tom McGuane,
where valor, brevity and minor epiphanies still count for something, yet
An Unfinished Life's strength lies in its characters. It's best
one is the irrepressible little girl, Griff, barely beating out the two
old coots, bitter Einar and handicapped Mitch, who talk with winning
honesty while struggling through their ablutions and medical
ministrations. . . . An Unfinished Life makes you yearn for more of these characters and their prescient talk." –The Oregonian
"Wyoming, its winds and distances, never quits. What a pleasure it is to watch a few of its hard-forged citizens stay with the task of forgiving, cherishing and caring for one another. Mark Spragg has got the territory dead right in this moving testimony to seeing things through." –William Kittredge"Spragg, with consummate skill, uses people and places we don't know to teach us something about ourselves. He explores human bonds, the difficulty of core change and ultimately the need for forgiveness if a person is to be emotionally whole. . . . An Unfinished Life is a deft contemplation of completion, of change and of coming home." –The Denver Post
"Intensely
human, gently probing the longing for family and the inescapable grip
of the past. Swiftly shifting perspectives lend the novel a pleasing
dynamism." –The Christian Science Monitor"Rich with ancillary
characters worked into his elaborate plots. . . . When all the scattered
elements of the story coalesce in strange and wondrous ways, so logical
yet so unexpected, we are tempted to use a western idiom and state that
Mark Spragg has put his brand on realistic Western novels in our time."
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“I can’t get more than a few pages into a novel unless the prose is good. In Mark Spragg’s An Unfinished Life the writing is of considerable grace and beauty, plus there’s a compelling tale of the New West which at times is an uncomfortable page turner where you are standing on the sidelines rooting for your heartbreaking favorites.” –Jim Harrison
"Spragg has the remarkable
ability to establish voices that feel indelibly genuine and true, yet
belong to characters as different from each other as a sensitive and
adventurous pre-pubescent girl, two aging ranchers ravaged by different
kinds of pain, a confused and self-protective young mother and a man
with a hair-trigger anger and a dangerously twisted concept of love,
entitlement and family." –Santa Fe New Mexican
"The tension lies
in the interior life Spragg creates for his characters. They are
believably raw and wounded. And, above all, redeemable." –New York Daily News"Mark Spragg invents characters that are as richly drawn and lovingly rendered as the landscape in which he sets them down. An Unfinished Life is
honest, engaged, deeply satisfying, and full of an uncanny grace that
resides both in the beauty of the language and in these valuable lives."
–Pam Houston
"An Unfinished Life has dysfunction and
menace and clipped, big-sky dialogue that's as spare as Cormac
McCarthy's work but with a warmer patina. The carefully placed story
hides surprising flashes of humor inside telling detail." –USA Today
"Packed with descriptive detail that pays tribute to Wyoming's harsh splendor, An Unfinished Life shows the power of place to save us." –The Boston Phoenix
"Mark Spragg's An Unfinished Life is a tremendously accomplished, elegantly written and paced tale of love and loss, the bonds of grief and blood, and the complex turnings of the human heart. This is a heartbreaking yet uplifting novel that is most deeply satisfying. These characters, these people, will remain with me a long, long time." –Jeffrey Lent
"One of those
once-in-a-blue-moon type novels that takes convention and stands it on
its head. . . . Filled with often poetic meditations about the love we
hold for those who have died--what sort of role their memories play in
our lives--and the importance of laying the past to rest while moving
into the future." –St. Petersburg Times "Masterly . . . Highly recommended."--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal, starred review
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