An Unfinished Life

Hailed by Kent Haruf as 'one of the truest and most original new voices in American letters', Mark Spragg now tells the story of a complex, prodigal homecoming. Jean Gilkyson, pregnant when her husband was killed, is raising their daughter Griff when, in an Iowa trailerhouse with yet another brutal boyfriend, she realizes this can't go on. But the only refuge available is a town in Wyoming where her loved ones are dead and her father-in-law wishes she was too. For a decade he has blamed her for his son's death, choosing to go on living himself largely because his oldest friend otherwise couldn't survive. Bound as close as brothers, they face old age on a faltering ranch, their interdependence even more acute after one was crippled and the other mauled by his own pain. Suddenly Griff Gilkyson meets this grandfather she'd never heard about, not to mention a black cowboy confined to the bunkhouse, and irrepressibly claims her new life in hopes of turning grievous loss and recrimination toward reconciliation and love.
Immediately compelling and constantly surprising, rich in character, landscape, and compassion, An Unfinished Life shows a novelist of extraordinary talents at the height of his power.