THE FRUIT OF STONE

Spragg's debut novel (after the well-received memoir, Where Rivers Change Direction) is a stylish western, set in present-day Wyoming and revolving around a longstanding romantic triangle. Barnum McEban, usually just known as McEban, is a 41-year-old bachelor living on his father's ranch with Ansel, the family ranch hand. His best friend, rancher-turned-developer Bennett Reilly, is married to McEban's old girlfriend, Gretchen. When Gretchen leaves Bennett, she also leaves behind a note recommending that he track her to Bozeman—and bring McEban with him. Bennett follows this advice, making the second half of the book a road trip through Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The two men are a fine pair: Bennett half-manic and defeated, and McEban sunk in guilt and memories. In Yellowstone Park, Bennett beats up a mute ranger and picks up two drifting Indians, 29-year-old Rita and her nine-year-old brother, Paul. Their company—and the company of Rita's dead sister, Alma, with whom Rita is in constant communication—distracts Bennett and McEban, but cannot keep Bennett from following the self-destructive course he is embarked on to a tragic end. Spragg has a nice ear for dialogue and can invest a character (notably Bennett) with comic energy. Unfortunately, all too often he obscures the solid virtues of his storytelling beneath the overfamiliar stoic lyricism that has become almost de rigueur in westerns in the wake of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. Author tour; foreign rights sold in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. (Aug.)