MAP OF WOOD AND STONE

map by Emily Garfield, https://www.emilygarfield.com/

What if Jane Austen had lived in Boston?  Set in the freewheeling New England of the 1830s when the Brahmin fortunes were made and transcendentalism born, Map of Wood and Stone has at its heart the story of young lovers parted by the rising industrial forces of the age.  Inspired by Austen’s wit and gentility, the book is full of twists on the familiar pleasures of 19th century literary fiction.

The death of her father shakes Marjorie Mortimer, at 18 the youngest of four siblings.  On her family’s Spring Hill Farm, she meets a mysterious young man who heralds bad news.  The great new cloth manufacturers are assembling the political support and vast capital needed to build the first railroad in New England, from Boston to Lowell.  The probable route will bisect the farm, sending Jorie’s future into doubt.

Punctuating Jorie’s search for a good life and advancing her story are the voices of exuberant American characters:  the father and son at the head of a great merchant house; the very first Unitarian, his transcendentalist nephew, and a peculiar schoolteacher; sea captains and shipbuilders, a firebrand farmer from Attleborough, and many others.

Map of Wood and Stone depicts both the excitement of a new age and its hidden costs, especially to women.  It shines light on the birth of a very modern dilemma, in which we celebrate intoxicating growth and great engineering achievements at the same time as we mourn the destruction of a beloved landscape.