Thursday, June 24, 2010

Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg

This is a luscious litWhere Rivers Change Directiontle book that captures a by growing up in rural Wyoming.  It is both a sweet book about this wonderful little boy and a wonderful story of how every boy should be raised - with horses and in the wilderness and allowed to have solitude and discover who he is.

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."

I don't generally like auto-biographies and would never have picked this up were it not for a friend raving about it.  I lovied this book - thanks Luce!

Rating: 4.8 Recommend