"Simmering with tension and urgent moral dilemmas . . . a satisfying family saga about the fraught but unbreakable bonds of love." --Foreword Reviews


In 1903 Barre, Vermont, granite is king--and it's killing the men who sculpt it.
While her father and brothers risk their lungs in the granite sheds and the town fractures over union strikes, twenty-year-old Rosina Bottinelli longs for a life shaped by her own hands. Determined not to be bound by marriage, she sets aside her artistic ambitions and turns to midwifery. Her apprenticeship to her formidable aunt reveals both the fierce power and the terrible cost of women's work.
But Barre is a tinderbox. A deadly lung disease--mal d'america--ravages the immigrant stonecutters. Labor unrest erupts into violence. And a bitter political rift between Rosina's unionist father and his capitalist brother threatens to shatter the family that crossed an ocean together.
As love and loyalty collide with ambition and belief, Rosina must decide what kind of life she will carve--and how long a shadow she is willing to cast.