Stone Cat

Matthew is the grandson of Mr. Joshua Pusey, inventor of the match cover. Home-schooled by his family in the wonders of match technology and how it shaped the modern era, he is caught up in the culture of cigarette paraphernalia and the vibrant world of matchbook swapfests and collectible match cover conferences.

Matthew is a master of drawing match covers in miniature. But despite the sublime level of his art and his lofty lineage, the floor manager at the Great American Match Company takes no interest in his work, ordering him to place his completed matchbook covers each day into a laundry chute. When he eventually learns about the invention of the cigarette lighter and realizes that no one (except his mother) takes his work seriously, he quits his job, empties his savings account, and travels to a Laotian mountaintop.

There, under the tutelage of an alcoholic ex-monk, and later in his termite-infested and quite possibly haunted red-roofed cottage, Matthew discovers the mind-numbing beauty of a centuries-old tradition of literature incised by stylus on leaves of palm by successive generations of nameless scribes. He believes this tradition will teach him not how to find meaning in his life but rather how to rid his life of that meaning. Then one day he discovers something in the story of a stone cat that he could swear refers to a family secret, and perhaps his own fate. Or perhaps not.

Peter Koret is the author of The Man who Accused the King of Killing a Fish: The Biography of Narin Phasit (1874-1970) and The History of Kham Thong Luang: A Translation and Study of an Early Twentieth Century Lao Poem. He has taught at Arizona State University, University of California, Berkeley, and the Shan National School in the Shan State of Myanmar.