THE STONE CARVERS
by Jane Urquhart
In my continuing quest to learn more Canadian history without actually picking up a textbook, Jane Urquhart is becoming one of my favorite authors. I absolutely loved her book Away about several generations of Irish women and their family’s immigration to Canada. The Stone Carvers is similarly well written, if slightly less absorbing.
The majority of the story is set before, during and after World War I and follows the story of a young “spinster” and her brother, a “tramp.” Both of these archetypes are filled in with backstory and personality, until the labels are almost forgotten.
Urquhart also depicts the arrival to Canada of a Bavarian priest in the mid-1800s. He decides he must build a big stone church in the middle of this rural valley, and undertakes to do so with the financial support of mad King Ludwig. In the second half of the book we also get the story of the Canadian memorial to missing soldiers in Vimy--how and why it was imagined and created in such spectacular fashion.
If these stories seem random, they are not. They tie together with the stories of the brother and sister, and in the end the reader cares, not just about them, but also about the carvers, the designers and even the priest. Urquhart weaves a vivid tapestry, though often follows just one thread for fifty pages at a time. I definitely learned more about Canada’s reaction to WWI, and the history of one of its more remote settlements. But for me, more important, I connected with the stories of humans trying to discover where they belong in the world, and how to leave their mark upon it. (Lily)
