Crossing Purgatory, Gary Schanbacher
Crossing Purgatory, Gary Schanbacher
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Crossing Purgatory

Author: Gary Schanbacher

Narrator: William Dufris

Unabridged: 9 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2013

Synopsis

In spring of 1858, Thompson Grey, a young farmer, travels to his father's estate seeking funds to expand his holdings. Far overstaying his visit, he returns home to find that his absence has contributed to a devastating family tragedy. Haunted by remorse, Thompson abandons his farm and begins a westward exile in the attempt to outpace his grief. Unwittingly, he finds himself at journey's end in the one place where his strongest temptations are able to overtake him and once again put him to the test. Set against the backdrop of the frontier during the years just preceding the Civil War, Crossing Purgatory tells a story of unprincipled ambition, guilt, and the price one man is willing to pay for atonement.

About Gary Schanbacher

Gary Schanbacher was educated at Randolph-Macon College, Old Dominion University, and the University of Colorado, where he earned his PhD in economics. He received a PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention and won the Colorado Book Award, the High Plains First Book Award, and the Eric Hoffer General Fiction Award for his short story collection, Migration Patterns. Schanbacker was a Hemingway Fellow at Ucross Foundation, serves on the board of directors of Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and is a founding partner of the Writers Block, a writing community in Denver.

About William Dufris

William Dufris attended the University of Southern Maine in Portland-Gorham before pursuing a career in voice work in London and then the United States. He has won more than twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards, was voted one of the Best Voices at the End of the Century by AudioFile magazine, and won the prestigious Audie Award in 2012 for best nonfiction narration. He lives with his family in Maine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by T.G.

Several years ago I read and enjoyed Migration Patterns, Gary Schanbacher's collection of short stories. I had been told that his writing would remind me of Ron Carlson's. It did. The stories involve colorful characters and unusual situations, and most of them are leavened with wry humor and light s......more

Goodreads review by Ericka

This is an amazing book, one that, after you read the last sentence, you close it slowly and hug it to your chest. It's a steady, quiet story with strong ties to the landscape. It’s often categorized as a Western, but it’s so much more than that.  Set in the 1850s on the border of the frontier, Thomp......more

Goodreads review by Bruce

Outrunning guilt and shame never seems to be a good plan. The torment and difficulties faced by a man on the run from himself make for difficult reading. Still, it was all too easy for me to feel, in Schanbacher's stark and compelling descriptions, the heavy burden carried by Thompson Grey in his we......more

Goodreads review by Katharine

“Crossing Purgatory” – written by Gary Schanbacher and published in 2013 by Pegasus Books. In 1858 Thompson Grey leaves his Indiana farm behind following a family tragedy and strikes out for parts unknown to the west. “He despaired time lost to foraging and rest, yet had not an inkling of his destin......more

Awards

  • Spur Award
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