In the Garden of Stone - by Susan Tekulve (Paperback)

About the Book

"This debut novel opens in 1924 with the derailment of a passing train that buries 16-year-old Emma Palmisano's house in coal. Caleb, the railroad man who rescues Emma, marries her a week later and gifts her with 47 acres of Virginia farmland. The novel tells the story of the successive generations of Emma and Caleb's family, who endure an d grow despite poverty and hardship."--Library Journal.

Book Synopsis

Shortly before daybreak in War, West Virginia, a passing train derails and spills an avalanche of coal over sixteen-year-old Emma Palmisano's house, trapping her sleeping family inside. The year is 1924, and the remote mines of Appalachia have filled with families like Emma's--poor, immigrant laborers building new lives half a world away from the island of Sicily. Emma awakes in total darkness, to the voice of a railroad man, Caleb Sypher, who is digging her out from the suffocating coal. From his pocket he removes two spotless handkerchiefs and tenderly cleans Emma's bare feet. Though she knows little else about this railroad man, Emma marries him a week later, and Caleb delivers her from the gritty coal camp to thirty-four acres of pristine Virginia mountain farmland. Winner of the South Carolina First Novel Prize in 2012, In the Garden of Stone is a multi-generational tale about the nature of power and pride, love and loss, and how one impoverished family endures estrangement from their land and each other in order to unearth the rich seams of forgiveness. Emma gives birth to a son, Dean, but the family's life is shattered by a hobo's bullet at the railroad station; the boy grows up early, becoming a remote man with fierce and unpredictable loyalties. Dean's daughter, Hannah, forsakes her heritage and wanders far from home, in the end reconnecting with the Sypher family in the wildest place of all, the human heart. Bleak, harrowing, and beautifully told, In the Garden of Stone, is a haunting saga of endurance and redemption.

Review Quotes

"In the Garden of Stone is a beautifully written saga telling the story of successive generations of a West Virginia family living out their lives in one particular spot of earth. There's a remarkable sensitivity to the mystery of how place affects human souls, and descriptions of the land are masterful. This is a writer who definitely has what it -- Josephine Humphreys "author"

"Susan Tekulve is not just a writer, but a real anthropologist of this world. She affords this land and these people the Syphers of the Virginia and West Virginia mountains the whole of their dignity. The sensibility in In the Garden of Stone is tender heartfelt and deeply committed." -- Robert Olmstead "Advance Praise"