Where Rivers Change Direction
by Mark Spragg
List Price:
Our Price: $7.95
You Save: $8.05 (50%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.38 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Mark SpraggEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-08-01
ISBN: 1573228257
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Book Reviews of Where Rivers Change Direction
Book Review: Written From The Heart
Summary: 5 Stars
One reviewer said of this book. "Mark Spragg's memoir makes you feel you've been somewhere, you've been out in the depths, and you've come back changed". This sums it up beautifully. There is not a page within these stories which will not grab your attention, hold you still while you absorb the soul of what Spragg has to tell you. It's a story of boyhood, of manhood, of the vast and unpredictable lands of Wyoming, where fences are strangers. There are stories in here which make the heart soar, and there are stories which make the heart break. As a reader, you're never quite sure where Spragg will take you next, you'll laugh with him, you'll tighten your throat at some of his words, and when you're done with this journey, you'll think the world around you has changed, but it hasn't, Spragg has just given you the magic to see it differently. Spragg lives his entire boyhood on the edge of manhood, unfolding himself into the landscapes and animals, both wild and domestic, which create his world. Of horses, he will tell you; "I believed that to have a horse between my legs, to extend my pulse and blood and energy to theirs, enhanced my vision. Made of me a seer. I believed them to be the dappled, sorrel, roan, bay, black pupils in the eyes of God". Of the dude ranch, where he learned about men and and animals, forests and water, of wind, he'll say; ".. but I did not know that I lived on the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty eight states. That is what I know as a man. As a boy, I knew only that I was free on the land". This memoir is beautifully written, from the first to the last page, Spragg's pen sometimes wounds the paper, sometimes heals it, and the reader is left feeling the scratching of a pen across the heart. This, for me, is one of the books that will sit always within easy reach on my bookshelves, there are times I'll seek Spragg's magic and bring it back into my world. This is a collection with something for everyone, because it touches the core of being human in a world where humanness is often the stranger. Do read, it's worth every moment of your time.
Summary of Where Rivers Change Direction
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Here is a book for women to read to learn the hearts of men. Here is a book for men to read to curse what they have lost?A fine example of blood-writing, every sentence alive."
--Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
"Stirring, evocative, finely nuanced, gritty-marvelous!"
--Gretel Ehrlich, author of The Solace of Open Spaces
It is a voice that echoes off canyon walls, springs from the rush of rivers, thunders from the hooves of horses. It belongs to award-winner Mark Spragg, and it's as passionate and umcompromising as the wilderness in which he was born: the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. Where Rivers Change Direction is the story of a boyhood spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming--with a family struggling against the elements and against themselves, and with the wry and wise cowboy who taught him life's most important lessons.
As the young Spragg undergoes the inexorable rites of passage that forge the heart and soul of man, this unforgettable memoir illuminates the heartfelt yearnings, the unexpected wisdom, and the irrevocable truths that follow in his wake...
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.
Where Rivers Change Direction combines a soaring spirituality with a visceral, often stomach-churning attention to detail. It's a book that continually dares the reader to turn away from its pages in an effort to digest the power of its confused emotions and hauntingly spare images (a "moon-fried plain," a stillborn child "baked alive in my mother's body"). Like Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, Mark Spragg's memoir makes you feel you've been somewhere, you've been out in the depths, and you've come back changed. --Emily White
Religious Books
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Foxby Nancy Rubin Stuart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2005-02-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Foreskin's Lament: A Memoirby Shalom Auslander
Penguin Audio; Published: 2007-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jailby Mary Jordan, Kevin Sullivan
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-05-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Confessions (Penguin Classics)by Augustine
Penguin Classics; Published: 1961-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.92
Price in other shops:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Lives of the Saintsby Paul L Williams, Dr. Paul L. Williams
Alpha; Published: 2001-06-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.87
Price in other shops:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haleyby Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Attallah Shabazz
Ballantine Books; Published: 1992-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.34
Price in other shops:
In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Familyby Nansook Hong
Little, Brown; Published: 1998-09-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.07
Price in other shops:
Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhoodby Barbara Wilson
Picador; Published: 1997-01-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cultby Jayanti Tamm
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2010-12-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)by Cecilia Ferrazzi
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1996-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.80
Price in other shops:
Eventideby Kent Haruf
Vintage; Published: 2005-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.15
Price in other shops:
Where You Once Belongedby Kent Haruf
Vintage; Published: 2000-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
The Fruit of Stone (Vintage Contemporaries)by Mark Spragg
Vintage; Published: 2011-04-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.07
Price in other shops:
Plainsongby Kent Haruf
Vintage; Published: 2000-08-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.85
Price in other shops:
The Power of the Dog : A Novelby Thomas Savage, Annie Proulx
Back Bay Books; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Bone Fire: A novel (Vintage)by Mark Spragg
Vintage; Published: 2011-04-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.13
Price in other shops:
An Unfinished Lifeby Mark Spragg
Vintage; Published: 2005-08-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
In Open Spacesby Russell Rowland
Published: 2002-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.58
Price in other shops:
The Tie That Bindsby Kent Haruf
Vintage; Published: 2000-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.68
Price in other shops:
The Meadowby James Galvin
Holt Paperbacks; Published: 1993-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.74
Price in other shops: