Silence Under A Stone

(Paperback)

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Description

An achingly beautiful novel about a mother forced to choose between her God and her only son. Sitting alone in her Dublin nursing home, Harriet Campbell reflects on a life that has become tainted by bitterness and regret. From a strictly Presbyterian community along the Irish border, at sixteen young Harriet is married off to Thomas, a respected church Elder but a cold, sober man twice her age. The birth of her son James, a bright boy destined for great things, brings joy and light to her life. But when he falls in love with a beautiful girl from the wrong faith, their relationship is torn apart. Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Norma MacMaster's Silence Under a Stone is an intimate, deeply moving story of love, faith and the pain of an irreconcilable heart.

Reviews

Epic . . . A stirring novel about redemption, and a way of living soon best forgotten * RTE Culture *
Richly portrayed in tight, lucid prose * Sunday Independent *
MacMaster's debut novel is bright with promise * RTE Guide *
Lyrical * Irish Examiner *
Remarkable . . . Timeless . . . Graceful * Irish Independent *

Author Bio

Norma MacMaster was born and reared in County Cavan before continuing her studies in Derry, Dublin, Belfast and Montreal. She was a secondary school teacher and counsellor in Ireland and Canada and was ordained a minister of the Church of Ireland in 2004. A contributor to Sunday Miscellany on RTE Radio 1, she is the author of a memoir, Over My Shoulder. She and her late husband have one daughter. Norma lives by the sea in North County Dublin, and wrote Silence Under A Stone 'a bit now and a bit then', typing with two fingers in her attic. It is her first novel.