An Unfinished Life

Audio book performed by Tony Amendola and Judith Marx

Jane Gilkyson has finally decided to leave her abusive boyfriend. With her 10-year-old daughter, Griff, she takes off in her ancient car, headed for the Pacific Ocean. But when the car dies and she’s left stranded, she has nowhere to turn but to her father-in-law, a man who blames her for the death of his son, and who is living his life in bitterness and misery on a small ranch in Ishawooa, Wyoming. Einar Gilkyson would probably be dead by now, too, except his oldest friend needs him, and that’s about all that keeps him going. It will be up to Griff to help them all see the need to let go of recrimination and regret, and to embrace love and forgiveness.

This is the first book by show more Mark Spragg that I’ve read, and it won’t be the last. He has mastered the art of “show, don’t tell,” giving us insight into these characters and their complex relationships without spelling anything out. His writing is rather spare, yet he conveys a strong sense of place. The dialogue is spot on; Griff asks intelligent questions but nothing a 10-year-old wouldn’t wonder, especially one who has grown to be a keen observer of others and learned to hold her questions until “the right time.” Einar and Mitch spar like the close friends they are – almost like an old married couple, they can anticipate each other’s thoughts and reactions. There is no pretty bow tying up the ending, either. There is hope for these people, but they still have a ways to go. I like a little ambiguity in my endings.

Spragg alternates different characters’ points of view. This lets the reader know what each character is thinking, but also serves to build suspense in that we aren’t privy to all the information at once. The audio book is masterfully performed by Tony Amendola and Judith Marx. show less

I was browsing used books and a title caught my eye. An Unfinished Life, by Mark Spragg. Something seemed familiar but I couldn't place it. I looked at it very briefly. There was a back cover endorsement by Jim Harrison, which I didn't bother to read. Harrison wrote Legends of the Fall, so his name as an endorsement was good enough for me.

I began to read. Spragg is an excellent storyteller and in the opening chapters there were two separate story lines that seemed to be moving towards each other. There were some elements of the story that seemed familiar, and one of the characters reminded me of a role Morgan freeman played in a movie. Now what was the name of that movie? Then, about 85 pages into the book, it hit me. The move was An show more Unfinished Life! No wonder the title caught my attention and the character seemed like the one played by Freeman! They were one and the same!

That said, this is an excellent story, told in a captivating manner. The movie was pretty good, but this book is excellent. Spragg brings out things in the characters, in terms of both their actions and thoughts, that just isn't captured well in a screenplay or on film. The theme of reconciliation is played out in a way that is both beautiful and poignant. I invite you to read it for yourself. You won’t be disappointed. show less

As a young boy and budding writer, William Faulkner would sit at the knees of his Mississippi relatives, listening with rapt attention to their stories of the War Between the States and Reconstruction. Those tales, with that distinct Southern vernacular, eventually wormed their way into his fiction and established Faulkner as one of the great transcribers of human speech.

Like the Yoknapatawpha wizard before him, Mark Spragg has spent the first forty-plus years of his life absorbing the speech and mannerisms of cowboys in Wyoming. Spragg’s books (the memoir Where Rivers Change Direction and the two novels The Fruit of Stone and An Unfinished Life) resonate with a particular tough-tender masculinity of Marlboro men. Spragg, who grew up show more on a dude ranch near Sheridan, Wyoming, has cracked the code on the closed circle of often-inscrutable males who make their living taming horses, stringing barbed wire and leading fat, pale city slickers on elk hunts. What Faulkner did for the Mississippi delta, Spragg does for the Rocky Mountain West—accurately transcribing the hard-bit, stoic lives that populate the equally unyielding land.

So, when we come to Spragg’s new novel, An Unfinished Life, it’s no surprise to find that he has convincingly etched a portrait of a bitter, grief-stricken seventy-year-old rancher named Einar Gilkyson who is counting the days until he can join his wife and son in their graves. His only reason for living is to play nursemaid to his Korean War buddy Mitch who’s been disfigured in a bear attack—a mauling which happened as Einar stood by helplessly. As penance, he gives Mitch daily shots of morphine and cleans his bedpan.

Like so many other old men of the New West—the clichéd “dying breed�€?—Einar and Mitch are living in a landscape (both moral and physical) that’s crumbling away. Einar tries to not be bothered by the influx of young married couples who have moved to Wyoming “for a more natural lifeâ€? and who drive around their twenty-acre ranchettes in brand-new SUVs. Even so, his spread outside the fictional Ishawooa is slowly being subdivided into parcels he leases to his neighbors. Since his only child—Griffin, the heir apparent—has died, Einar knows the land will remain undeveloped only as long as he’s there to keep the ranch running—which, at this point, means milking his one remaining cow and selling Mason jars of the milk to the local co-op.

In Spragg’s hands, this old cowboy becomes not just words on a page, but a character as real as the icy sting of wind-driven snow on our face. We can hear the carefully held-back speech slip from between his clamped, stoic lips; we can feel the shape of his weathered, scarred heart. After just three books, this is the kind of character we’ve come to expect from Spragg’s pen.

What’s surprising, therefore, in this new novel is the fact that Spragg extends that same authentic voice to a ten-year-old girl named Griff who eventually becomes the central character in An Unfinished Life. The precocious and endearing Griff is the granddaughter Einar’s never met. He still holds his daughter-in-law Jean responsible for his son’s death in a car accident a decade ago and has written her out of his life while still carrying around the ghost of his son.

Jean and Griff have drifted through life in the Midwest, attracting no-good deadbeat guys who use Jean as a punching bag. The latest one is a scary individual named Roy who, in the space of a few words, manages to turn an apology into an accusation during a morning-after conversation with Jean (“I hate when you back me into a corner…I don’t know why I come out swinging like I do.â€?). Griff keeps a packed suitcase under her bed, waiting for her mother to wise up and get them the hell out of Roy’s trailer. Meanwhile, she fantasizes about a tornado sucking Roy up into the sky, even though she knows it’s no use:

Dead or alive, her mother would replace him. Before Roy in this trailer in Iowa there was Hank in the trailer in Florida, and before Hank there was Johnny in the little house that smelled like cat pee, and before Johnny there was Bobby. She can’t remember Bobby very well, but there’ve been four. Everybody’s mother is good at something. Her mother’s good at finding the same man, no matter where she lives.

Eventually, Roy’s fist lands one time too many on Jean’s face and the mother and daughter sneak away from the maniacal lover, heading west toward the only place Jean thinks she can hide from Roy’s rage: her hometown of Ishawooa. Once Jean and Griff show up on his doorstep, Einar grudgingly allows them to stay at his place, even though the sight of his daughter-in-law continually stabs him with pain and anger over the early death of his son.

That sorrow is salved, however, by the charm of his granddaughter. Griff quickly endears herself to both Einar and Mitch (as well as to the reader) and it’s the bond between the two old cowboys and the young girl which becomes the most compelling part of An Unfinished Life. Griff longs for a stable family life and she finds it in the gruff-but-sweet Einar and the nurturing compassion of Mitch. Yes, this may sound familiar to fans of Kent Haruf’s best-selling novel Plainsong (and, indeed, Spragg gives a nod to Haruf in the book’s dedication), but An Unfinished Life is invested with its own unique stamp of what I’m beginning to think is Spragg’s trademark: the rough beauty of the authentic West.

The novel takes its title from the epitaph engraved on Griffin’s grave, but it’s also Einar who has an unfinished life and now, in the December of old age, he must learn how to tie up the loose ends of his life—let go of his bitterness toward Jean, as well as forgive himself for letting the grizzly maul Mitch.

An Unfinished Life has its share of predictable moments, especially when the hot-tempered Roy shows up in Ishawooa and the novel turns into something resembling Sleeping With the Enemy and we realize that we’ve been mentally casting Julia Roberts or Ashley Judd in that woman-in-peril role. Instead, the movie version due in December from director Lasse Hallstrom stars Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford.

Hollywood and hackneyed plot elements aside, there’s a lot going for An Unfinished Life. There is the rich beauty of Spragg’s honed writing style, there is the engaging relationship between two grizzled cowboys and a young girl who renews their faith in life, but mostly there is the Faulkneresque way in which the author has captured and retained the details of his own life growing up in Wyoming. Just as Einar, who has preserved his dead son’s room and wardrobe, says, “I’m careful about what I throw away,â€? so, too, is Spragg meticulous about the words he chooses to leave on the page. show less

I'm sure that I read this book before - but I don't remember when. The movie was on t.v. a few weeks ago and the story was so familiar that I was surprised not to find the book in my LibraryThing account. I rectified that by re-reading the book. This is a beautiful book of redemption, of being able to forgive, of love. The characters are so well drawn and, with the exception of Roy, very likable, despite their flaws. There is some rough language, particularly when the story is told from the point-of-view of Roy - which makes sense but might be objectionable.

Jean Gilkyson has finally had enough. Her latest loser boyfried, Roy, has hit her for the last time and she knows that it is past time for herself and her 9 year old daughter Griff to leave. They head for Ishawooa, Wyoming, the small town where Jean grew up and where she met and married Griffin Gilkyson, her husband who has now been dead for nearly 10 years after an automobile accident in which Jean was driving. There is nothing left in Ishawooa for Jean but that is where her father-in-law Einar lives and she hopes he will help her long enough to get back on her feet. Einar still blames Jean for his son's death and wants nothing to do with her but his heart is warmed by sweet Griff who longs for a stable home and family. Also living on show more Einar's ranch is Mitch, a friend of 50 years, who is horribly scarred and crippled from a confrontation with a bear. Einar and Mitch are quickly smitten with Griff and can't imagine their lives without her. Unfortunately, a vengeful Roy has tracked Jean to Ishawooa and nothing will stop him from getting her back.

I can't express how much I love Einar and Mitch. They are curmudgeons with hearts of gold and a loyal friendship that overcomes so much. Some of their conversations had me chuckling while always being touched by the love they obviously feel for one another. Griff is a wonderful character who has had to learn to trust these men to be the family she desperately wants. The only character I had issues with is Jean who needed to put her child first long before moving to Wyoming. She is just a bit too willing to jump into any available bed which is what got her in trouble in the first place, I guess. Great book and it was also a fairly decent movie a few years back. show less

A very good "story" told in the different voices of the main characters in the audio version. There is a wonderful relationship between the two older men. The development of their feelings about Griff---as well as her complete appreciation of them, is a very satisfying reading experience. She is a very old ten-year-old.

Nine-year-old Griff and her mom Jean flee Jean's abusive and delusional boyfriend in an Iowa trailer house and hit a westward road. The whims of the road changes their whim to drive to the Pacific coast, and they instead stop in Ishiwooa, Wyoming where Griff's grandfather lives on a ranch. Jean and Einar don't get along, but Griff is elated with the change of pace. She gets to do useful things around the property and befriends her grandfather's crippled best friend, Mitch. This story weaves the ambiance of living in the rural mountain west, a touch of Horse Whisperer-esque cliche, but otherwise keeps you reading as the family struggles to reunite despite a harsh past.

My favorite part of the story, other than it reminds me of my show more childhood in Colorado, is that much of the story revolves around a wise young girl and quirky old men. Old men often have the best stories, wisdom, and a youthful sense of fun. Griff didn't have that stability with her mom always selecting mean boyfriends, and through this story she discovers herself, nature, and that real wood houses are better than the fake stuff in cheap trailers. A genuine country lifestyle and old men are pretty cool for a girl like Griff. show less