Where Rivers Change Direction: A Memoir

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Growing up in rural Wyoming, Mark Spragg learned early to read the stars. At 11 he was instructed to quit dreaming, and he went to work for his father on the land. "I was paid thirty dollars a month, had my own bed in the bunkhouse, and three large, plain meals each day." The ranch is a sprawling place where winter brings months of solitude and summer brings tourists from the real world--city types who want a taste of the outdoors and stare at the author and his family as if they were members of some exotic tribe: "Our guests were New Jersey gas station owners, New York congressmen, Iowa farmers, judges, actors, plumbers, Europeans who had read of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and came to experience the American West, the retired, the just beginning." By the age of 14, he and his younger brother are leading them on camping trips into deep woods. "No one ever asked why we had no televisions, no daily paper. They came for what my brother and I took for granted. They came to live the anachronism that we considered our normal lives."

As Spragg comes to realize the strangeness of his life, he also detects flaws in his own character--a fear of suffering and mortality that first shows itself when he rides a sick horse too hard, until the animal hovers at the brink of death. He knows that if he had faced the possibility of sickness, if he had been brave, this animal would not have declined so quickly. Throughout his life, this inability to face death, this terror of losing the beauty of the world he so passionately witnesses, drives Spragg to distraction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Mark Spragg's collection of essays renders an unforgettable story of an adolescence spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming - a remote spread on the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states.. "On the occasion of buying his first horse, Spragg earns a rare day-off from work and spends it at a stock auction with his father, a man whose love, though earned, remains ineffable. A life-threatening accident on an elk hunt in a remote wilderness area becomes a reflection upon the depth and nature of the bond between a young man and his mentor. A boy's desire to fire a gun is cause for questioning rites of passage that wed manhood and violence. A mortally injured wild horse and a mysterious, reclusive neighbor haunt the winter Spragg spends as a caretaker at a snow-bound ranch where the dance between life and death, sanity and insanity, is inescapable.. "Where Rivers Change Direction illuminates the unexpected wisdom and irrevocable truth embedded in the small but profound dramas of one boy's journey toward manhood. From a wild and unforgiving setting emerges an individual of extraordinary fortitude, humility, and understanding.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Wyoming, land of wind and dust, of suicides, loneliness and fierce lovemaking, of uninterrupted vistas stretching 20 miles in every direction, of hard-drinking men and fighting women, forms the backdrop to Spragg's brave and beautiful coming-of-age memoir. Readers expecting a quaint, picturesque yarn will find instead an elemental, powerful confrontation with the naked realities of living and dying. Growing up on the high Yellowstone Plateau on the state's oldest dude ranch, a family business dating back to 1898, Spragg wrangles horses for his taciturn father, trying to win his respect and approval. At age 14, Spragg shoots and mercy-kills his beloved, aged, sickly steed, whose corpse will be used as bait for bears targeted by human hunters. The teenage Spragg joins his father on hunts, an experience he recalls ruefully (he no longer hunts, he reports, and became a vegetarian for five years). With self-deprecating wryness, the author, a screenwriter and essayist, re-creates adolescent crushes and hijinx. From quotidian events--communing with horses, attending a livestock auction--he fashions existential encounters with nature, self, fear, death, God. Composed in clean, crisp prose, his loping narrative is peopled with memorable characters, like his 40-ish mentor and bunkmate, John, a smiling, battle-scarred WWII veteran, or the mediumistic Greenwich Village waiter from India who tells Spragg, then 27, about his dead infant sister, reducing him to tears. Encompassing his marriage, divorce and remarriage, the book closes with Spragg's almost unbearably poignant account of caring for his mother, dying of emphysema and housebound on an oxygen inhalator. A piercing voice from the heartland, this resonant autobiography weds the venerable Western tradition of frontier exploration of self and nature with the masculine school of writing stretching from Hemingway to Mailer. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Spragg's essays recall childhood and young adult years spent on a Wyoming dude ranch. He focuses on the realities of everyday life typical of the area—the isolation, the weather, respect for animals and nature. Spragg also addresses teenage concerns that are common themes of YA literature—earning the respect of family, experiences with the opposite sex, and trying to fit in, but feeling like an outsider. Readers from this region, or those interested in Westerns, will make the best audience for this material. It's a shame. It's a well-written book, but the protagonist is an older man, looking back on his early years—not a voice most teens are likely to identify with. They are also not likely to peruse this book and enjoy its droll humor. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students, and adults. 1999, Berkley/Riverhead, 283p, 21cm, 99-051649, $12.95. Ages 17 to adult. Reviewer: Tricia Finch; Youth Services Librarian, North Port Public Library, North Port, FL, November 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 6)

Library Journal

Spragg's first book is about growing up on the country's oldest dude ranch--and much more. A rare accomplishment in "sense of place" literature, this deftly evokes life in the wide-open of Wyoming's Continental Divide. In each of these 14 essays, his direct, spacious, tangible prose vibrates with the fragile crisis and joy of a man face to face with nature and himself. (LJ 10/15/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Essayist and fiction writer Spragg offers 14 lyrical essays on the trials and beauties of growing up on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming in the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower 48. He includes no index or bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Cathy Madison - The Utne Reader

Spragg's spare but sensual essays will resonate not only with males and horse lovers, but also with anyone who treasures an examined life.Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

This is a book that deserves many readers. — Larry McMurtry