Wyoming

Framed said, "Candleman @ http://www.carpecrustulum.blogspot.com/ suggested An Unfinished Life for Wyoming. Don't know the author."

In an extraordinary tale of love and forgiveness, Mark Spragg brings us this novel of a complex, prodigal homecoming. After escaping the last of a long string of abusive boyfriends, Jean Gilkyson and her ten-year-old daughter Griff have nowhere left to go. Nowhere except Ishawooa, Wyoming, where 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.

Framed continued, "That suggestion led me to Where Rivers Change Directions by Mark Spragg and Fencing the Sky by James Galvin also for Wyoming."

Where Rivers Change Direction: A Memoir by Mark Spragg is a collection of essays telling an unforgettable story of an adolescence spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming, a remote spread on the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. On the occasion of buying his first horse, Spragg earns a rare day-off from work and spends it at a stock auction with his father, a man whose love, though earned, remains ineffable. A life-threatening accident on an elk hunt in a remote wilderness area becomes a reflection upon the depth and nature of the bond between a young man and his mentor. A boy's desire to fire a gun is cause for questioning rites of passage that wed manhood and violence. A mortally injured wild horse and a mysterious, reclusive neighbor haunt the winter Spragg spends as a caretaker at a snow-bound ranch where the dance between life and death, sanity and insanity, is inescapable. Where Rivers Change Direction illuminates the unexpected wisdom and irrevocable truth embedded in the small but profound dramas of one boy's journey toward manhood. From a wild and unforgiving setting emerges an individual of extraordinary fortitude, humility, and understanding.

Fencing the Sky by James Galvin reveals how passion can send circumstances spiraling out of control: the inevitable clash when people believe the land they love is threatened. Galloping through the lush, beaver-worked draw looking for stray cows, Mike Arans never imagined that he was about to kill a man by swinging a nylon lasso around his neck. Once the man was dead, Mike pulled a notepad and pencil stub from his pocket and wrote, "I did this." He signed the note and stuffed it into the dead man's breast pocket. Mike then returned home, stocked up on supplies, and within minutes was heading west. Thus begins what turns out to be a dramatic escape into the rugged wilderness of northern Colorado and Wyoming. The novel's deeper story, however, goes back many years and confronts the issues that divide contemporary westerners. At its center are Ad, Oscar, and Mike, whose lives turn with the seasons and the rigors of ranch life, mountain-hardened men who do not possess but are themselves possessed by the land.