Stonecutter - Hardcover

Watts, Leander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 061816474X ISBN 13: 9780618164745

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers, 2002

Synopsis

Albion has the gift. With hammer and chisel he can carve angels from cold stone. Apprenticed to a master stonecutter, he’s learning an art that sets him apart from other boys.
But he does not live an easy life, growing up in the barely settled reaches of the American frontier. And when strangers come to his home in Little Sion and make him an incredible offer, Albion decides to leave his small town behind.
Lured away to work on a secret project on the utmost fringes of civilization, Albion meets a renegade Iroquois with a thirst for revenge, a girl like no other he’s ever known, and a new master who demands more than Albion can give.
This is the tale of his journey into darkness and back again. This is his journal, one of the only things that survives his trek into a strange and unforgiving world.

About this title

About the Author:

Leander Watts is an author of adult nonfiction and a college English professor. His historical novels provide a welcome antidote to contemporary young adult fiction. He lives in the Genesee Valley in western New York, where he writes and teaches English literature.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this nuanced debut novel, Watts (Easter Mice!) relates the story of 14-year-old Albion Straight, apprentice stonecutter in 1835 in the Genesee valley in rural New York State. Journal entries describe Albion's work carving gravestones ("Our tools are cold and hard but they can make a softness, if our skills prevail, out of sandstone and marble and slate") and life with his kindly master's family, including Little Watty, a peculiar, fey child who sees portents and signs everywhere, from Halley's Comet to his vision-plagued dreams. The author slowly and effectively builds a sense of dread as Albion's skills attract the attention of a strange visitor, who hires him to work at Goodspell, an eerie, half-finished mansion comprised of "huge beams jutted this way and that like the bones of a dead giant." As Albion's true mission unfolds, his work designing a memorial for his employer's late wife becomes entangled with the yearnings of his employer's daughter, a beautiful, lonely young woman and the spitting image of her mother. The manor's hidden passageways and disquieting sounds inspire some of the author's most memorable writing, which stirs a sense of foreboding ... la Jane Eyre. Despite the vivid imagery, however, the plot sputters to a rather predictable climax. Still, it's an intriguing tale, and the ominous, claustrophobic tone that Watts sustains marks this writer as one to watch. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 061816474X
• ISBN 13: 9780618164745
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224