Bone Fire

Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays, as the sheriff, Crane Carlson, is reminded when he finds a teenager murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who's going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather. Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife, and his only child, and his long-absent sister has lately returned home from Chicago after watching her soul mate die. His granddaughter, Griff, has dropped out of college to look after him, though Einar would rather she continue with her studies and her boyfriend, Paul. Completing this extended family are Barnum McEban and his ward, Kenneth, a ten-year-old whose mother (Paul's sister) is off marketing enlightenment. What these characters have to contend with on a daily basis is bracing enough, but as their lives become even more strained, hardship foments exceptional compassion and generosity, and along with harsh truths come moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg, and Bone Fire finds him at the very height of his powers.

About the Author :
Mark Spragg is the author of "Where Rivers Change Direction, " a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, and the novels "The Fruit of Stone" and "An Unfinished Life, " which was chosen by the "Rocky Mountain News" as the Best Book of 2004. All three were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife, Virginia, in Wyoming.

Review :
"A starkly beautiful portrait of the modern West. Spragg is an author with a keen eye for both the poetic splendors and ugly realities of this much-romanticized country." --Joe Darda, "The Globe and Mail" (Canada) "Teeming with loss, redemption and personal crisis [with] as compelling a sense of time and place as any in contemporary fiction." --Christian Toto, The Denver Post "About once in a decade a writer captures the unruly West, wrangles it onto the page somehow and holds it down with just the right words...[Mark Spragg] is infused with it." --Susan Salter Reynolds, "Los Angeles Times" "A wonder to experience....The bone fire in question can be seens as a metaphor for the grief that burns in one's soul. That fire has the power to cause great pain but also, one is led to hope here, to heal." --Tyrone Beason, "The Seattle Times" "A serious pleasure....Spragg's Wyoming is quiet and beautiful and very real. He is a master at balancing minimalism with eloquent depth to paint a striking portrait of place." --Susan Wickstrom, "The Oregonian" "Essential reading for anyone interested in the literature of the West." --Bill Ott, "Booklist" (starred review) "A tribute to the human state and an outstanding work...Not one word is out of place, and each and every character is well drawn and intensely believable....This 'bone fire' is in fact the burning we call life, symbolizing our shared pain as human beings." --Henry Bankhead, "Library Journal" (starred review) "Spragg's writing is so lyrical yet so quiet. It's perfect for the characters that populate his stories, men and women who just like to get things done; people for whom a life of hard work and integrity is more than enough, it's what they strive for. These are people I know: they're like my father and his friends in Eastern Utah. Spragg's portrayals of the men and women of small town rural America feel true to me. He doesn't write romanticized drivel about time