An Unfinished Life

Jean Gilkyson is floundering in a trailer house in Iowa with yet another brutal boyfriend when she realizes this kind of life has got to stop, especially for the sake of her daughter, Griff. But the only place they can run to is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's loved ones are dead and her father-in-law, the only person who could take them in, wishes that she was too. For a decade, Einar Gilkyson has blamed her for the accident that took his son's life, and he has chosen to go on living himself largely because his oldest friend, Mitch, couldn't otherwise survive. They've been bound together like brothers since the Korean War and now face old age on a faltering ranch, their intimacy even more acute after Mitch was horribly crippled by a grizzly bear while Einar helplessly watched. Of course, ten-year-old Griff knows none of this. But once she encounters this grandfather she'd never heard about, and the black cowboy confined to the bunkhouse, with irrepressible courage and great spunk she attempts to turn grievous loss, wrath, and recrimination -- to which she's naturally the most vulnerable -- toward reconciliation and love. Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, and The Fruit of Stone, a novel (also available on audio from HighBridge). Both were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into seven languages. He lives in Cody, Wyoming. Reader Tony Amendola is an accomplished actor in classical and contemporary theatre, television and film. Reader Judith Marx has worked extensively as a classical stage actress throughout the United States.