Bone Fire

Mark Spragg

ISBN 10: 0307272753 / ISBN 13: 9780307272751

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, New York, U.S.A., 2010

About this Item

N/N, 244 PP. Black paper over boards with copper text on spine; slight scuff at head of upper near tip. Illustrated dust jacket with copper and white colored text on upper and spine; slight rubbing overall; no chips or tears; not price clipped. Interior pages clean, unmarked. Binding is straight and tight.

Seller Inventory # 015296

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bone Fire
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, New York, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307272753
• ISBN 13: 9780307272751
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays. The sheriff, Crane Carlson, needs no reminder of this but gets one anyway when he finds a kid not yet twenty 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—far too young—their 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 spiritual enlightenment.

What these characters have to contend with on a daily basis is bracing enough, involving car accidents, runaway children, strokes and Lou Gehrig’s disease, not to mention the motorcycle rallies and rodeos that flood the tiny local jail. But as their lives become even more strained, hardship foments exceptional compassion and generosity, and those caught in their own sorrow alleviate the same in others, changing themselves as they do so. In this gripping story, along with harsh truths and difficult consolation come moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg, and in Bone Fire he is 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.