The sapwood snaps and shifts in the low-bellied stove, and the heat swells up against the roofboards and weathered fir planking, and the whole small building seems to groan.

An Unfinished Life

After escaping an abusive boyfriend, Jean Gilkyson and her ten-year-old daughter Griff have nowhere left to go except Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's estranged father-in-law, Einar, still blames her for the death of his son. Though Einar isn’t glad to see either of them, Griff falls in love with his sprawling ranch and quiet way of life, as she slowly gets to know his old friend Mitch, the cats that lurk in the barn at milking time, and finally the grandfather she had lost for so many years.

Knopf, 2004
Vintage, 2005
Highbridge Audio, 2005
ISBN 978-1400076147

BookSense Top Ten
Mountains and Plains Book Award finalist (fiction) 2004
Mountains & Plains Independent bestseller
Pacific Northwest Independent bestseller

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Spragg unfolds a marvelous, unsentimental family story.
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An Unfinished Life has dysfunction and menace and clipped, big-sky dialogue that's as spare as Cormac McCarthy's work but with a warmer patina.
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What lingers after readers turn the final page is an unforgettable portrayal of the irrepressible Griff. She is the heartbeat of this novel and Spragg has created a masterpiece in her character.
An Unfinshed Life is what a good contemporary western should be: complex, human, fast-paced and highly attuned to the details of life and landscape that make the West what it is.
An Unfinished Life is a beautifully crafted piece of fiction.
Intensely human, gently probing the longing for family and the inescapable grip of the past. Swiftly shifting perspectives lend the novel a pleasing dynamism.
In this evocative novel, Spragg [uses] the grandeur of the American landscape to provide a haunting backdrop for the drama of his characters' lives.
Spragg writes in the man's man literary school of Hemingway and Tom McGuane, where valor, brevity and minor epiphanies still count for something, yet An Unfinished Life's strength lies in its characters...An Unfinished Life makes you yearn for more of these characters and their prescient talk.
Spragg has the remarkable ability to establish voices that feel indelibly genuine and true.