The Fruit of Stone - Softcover

Spragg, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224061453 ISBN 13: 9780224061452

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

Mark Spragg's first book, Where Rivers Change Direction, was one of the very best American memoirs of recent years, praised for its 'sublime and staggering prose...and a genuine intuitive passion which makes every page of this wonderful book so seductive' (Independent on Sunday). Now, with The Fruit of Stone, Spragg emerges as a novelist of the very first rank. Set in Wyoming, in cattle country, The Fruit of Stone is the story of two men and one woman. McEban, a rancher, has loved Gretchen Reilly all his life; and all his life Bennett, Gretchen's husband, has been his best friend. When Gretchen leaves Bennett, the two men follow her trail on a strange, fateful journey across Wyoming to Nebraska. Spragg's characters are unforgettable, his prose is at once tender and muscular, his portrait of the harsh but beautiful landscape breathtaking. With this remarkable novel he takes his place beside Cormac McCarthy, Thomas McGuane and Kent Haruf as one of the great contemporary chroniclers of the American West.

About this title

Review:

"Spragg evokes these doomed characters and the land they inhabit with an achingly beautiful lyricism. Like Annie Proulx and Gretl Erhlich, he's a writer who makes Wyoming's high country so familiar it feels like the reader's own native ground." --"Chicago Tribune"
"Unforgettable. . . . A long love song to Wyoming and the tough, do-it-right-or-don't-do-it-at-all people who live there." --"Denver Post
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"A unique, movingly detailed road map of the human soul." --"Milwaukee Journal Sentinel"
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"Full of smart troubled people, natural speech, wonderful, lyrical prose, and the great wide varied landscape of Wyoming, where good men and deep women play out their love-burdened lives. . . . Mark Spragg owns one of the truest and most natural voices in American letters." --Kent Haruf, author of" Plainsong"
"[A] pickup truck odyssey . . . lyrical one moment, gritty the next." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
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"What at first seems to be a standard love story is soon revealed to be something much more epic--two hardened men, battling each other and their own demons in the bleak, unforgiving landscape of the West. [A] tale of obsession, desire and rage." --"The Washington Post"
"A refreshing stew of grit and intelligence, longing and loyalty. . . . Places Spragg firmly in the company of such Western writers as Cormac McCarthy and Wallace Stegner." --"Rocky Mountain News "

Book Description:

'Imagine the spirit of Hemingway reborn in the soul of a ranch-owner's son in Wyoming' - Esquire

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0224061453
• ISBN 13: 9780224061452
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304