The Fruit of Stone

For the record, I am a big Mark Spragg fan. I would start a Mark Spragg fan club if I didn't secretly dream of being friends with him and I don't think that can happen if he sees me as some groupie who sends out a newsletter with gushy words and candid photos taken while stalking him at his ranch. T......more

In this novel the landscape of Wyoming and Yellowstone is like the inner landscape of the characters. Two men love a woman from their teen years to their 60s. A horse and a dog accompany them on a quest for the woman, Gretchen. Mark Spragg breathes their breaths, feels their aches. He's an exception......more

Prepare yourself to be stunned by an astonishing language of light, shadows, water, wind, rock, and darkness. Prepare to meet people whose conciousness has been shaped by these forces and by their love of these forces. Prepare for the thoughts and convictions of such persons, collided with the frenet......more

I really like this author. I read a collection of his essays that I was very impressed with and I thought this novel was wonderful. Kind of Ivan Doig, Kent Haruf like but a little more raw and with the right amount of tragedy.......more

Fruit of Stone is a fine book that gets better the farther one reads. It is a smoldering fire that consumes itself slowly in a somber tale of sad Wyoming endings. Spragg does a fine job feeding the contained fire in two parallel tracks of youth to young adult and in a few weeks of the present time.......more