Spragg completes a sparkling hat trick with his second novel, following his equally fine debut, The Fruit of Stone (a Booklist Top 10 First Novel in 2002), and his much-acclaimed memoir Where Rivers Change Direction (1999). Returning again to his home turf, the high-country horse ranches of Wyoming, Spragg tells a riveting tale of hard-won friendship, old wounds and fresh pain, and love lost and found. Attempting to escape the latest in a long string of abusive boyfriends, Jean Gilkerson, traveling with her nine-year-old daughter, Grif, is on the run with no place to go. No place, that is, except Wyoming, home of her former father-in-law, Einar, who holds her responsible for the accidental death of his son. Alternating from the points of view of Einar, Jean, Grif, and Einar's war buddy and best friend, Mitch, Spragg charts the bone-against-bone meeting of a rugged-individualist rancher and his equally headstrong daughter-in-law, but he shows how Grif and Mitch, each with burdens of their own, manage to temper the conflict with humanity, forcing the combatants to reveal their own vulnerability and face their demons. Generations come of age, each in its own way, as tenderness survives stubbornness, pain, and silence. Each word counts for more than it says in this achingly beautiful story of courage and endurance. Spragg belongs in the same category with such tough-and-tender western writers as William Kittredge, Ivan Doig, and Larry Watson.