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112 pages

English

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Description

Sand and Gravel is a dramatic and engaging novel about three generations as they struggle to protect—and finally—give new life to a farm that has been in the family for generations.

Amos, Caroline's husband, feels his only option to caring for his family is to sell the sand and gravel off of the farm, defacing the land and disrupting the family in the process.

All of the children flee the desolation but when Sarah returns at age 50, she finds a way to bond the family and conserve the land for future generations. The restoration of old buildings is is accurately portrayed and the conservation of the land takes on a whole new aspect.

Wonderful, memorable characters in a family dilemma that all readers can relate to.

Sujets

Family Life

Fiction

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780983251101
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Sand and Gravel
By
Clara Stites

LandMarc Company
Crockett, Texas 75835

© Copyright © 2013 Clara Stites.

All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

LandMarc Company
P.O. Box 1075
Crockett, TX 75835

Sand and Gravel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Any errors of fact are solely the author’s.

Design by LandMarcDesign.com
Cover Art by John Powel, Yellow Boat Studio

Published in eBook format by LandMarc Company
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-9832-5110-1

To Bev, for her strength, and to Jessie, for her fire.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Anne Baker, Andy Burnes, Penny Bragonier, Betsy Campbell, Llewellyn Howland III, Sarah Kelley, Bev, David and Howland King, Nancy Marcus Land, Leslie Lawrence, MataGiri, John Powel, Laura Price, Jessie Schell, Sterling Watson, and the many friends who served as first readers.
About the Author

Clara Stites is a reader, writer, editor, sailor, wannabe farmer, sister of a swami, married with grandchildren. Life slips into her writing, writing into her life. Clara grew up in New England and her affection for the land, water, and people shines through her novel which is set in an entirely fictional, yet tantalizingly familiar community. The inspiration for Sand and Gravel came from an old farmhouse that fascinated Clara when she was a child; all the earth around the house had been dug out and carried away by a family-run gravel operation, yet the family still lived in the house. How strange, she thought. From there, the book grew, combining memory and imagination.

Sand and Gravel is Clara Stites’ first novel. She has also written four historical books for middle readers and several dozen short stories that have appeared in literary magazines. She lives in southeastern Massachusetts with her husband, half a dozen chickens, and four border collies.
Part 1: The Farm
October has come again to Massachusetts, turning salt marshes gold, then brown. But trees are prematurely bare, the flame of autumn extinguished by September’s hurricane. Evidence of the wind is everywhere: downed branches, late crops blighted by salt spray, the corner of a roof pried up to let in the rain. In the larger world, the war goes on: Allied troops have liberated Paris, MacArthur’s forces approach the Philippines, FDR anticipates his fourth term. Closer in, the high school football team leads the league, a boy’s wool coat costs six dollars, Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound promises relief from periodic female weakness. And in the world of a small farm, the work goes on much as it always has. Care for the animals, clean fallen branches from the orchard, save what is worth saving of the crop, prepare for winter’s isolation.
The farm itself—the old Shell farm—lies near the head of the bay, five miles from town. Follow Elm Street to the end. Leave clustered houses and shops behind, along with "good mornings" over coffee at the luncheonette and neighbors close enough for their lights to be a comfort on winter nights. The road narrows, potholes and frost heaves unmended year after year until, finally, the school bus driver and the rural mail carrier have complained.
Farmhouses stand alone, divided from each other by fields and woods. Some are still working farms. One is carved already into the straight grid of streets and muddy beginnings of cellar holes. Each farm is a world to itself: complete, isolated, a world shrinking inward as unmown, ungrazed, uncultivated fields allow vines and saplings to creep closer to house, barn, and orchard.
Take a left by the rusty mailbox, in through the stone wall’s opening. At the end of the half-mile dirt lane, a farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings overlook the bay from a long, high slope of pastureland. Here, as on every farm, land and weather set out a week’s work: when to plant, when to harvest. The animals allot the minutes of each day. No matter if a cold wind sweeps in from the northeast, chilling face and fingers and driving snow against the back door, water must be carried to the barn in 20-gallon milk cans, hay tossed down from the mow, grain scooped into mangers.
Often, this is called the simple life . Independent. Men beholden to no one, rooted in the earth and chained by its seasons. And the women—faceless, invisible, obedient. The strength behind it all.
~ 1 ~
October, 1944: Caroline lay on the bed in her half-dark room. Something was moving, pressing, surging inside her. It seemed to roll forward, pause, then back, forward again, and always, even in the pauses, seemed to know where it would end. With the rolling came a sound, a cry, a groan, perhaps from Caroline’s own throat, she could not tell.
Amos spoke from far away. "It’ll be soon," he touched her face, but the wave pushed her away from his hand and from the bedside light and from the window overlooking the October dusk.
Water around her now, or blood, perhaps. She felt it gush hot from her body, and heard Amos’ startled sound. She saw old Doctor Barry, his glasses and bald head shining above her like a distant moon. With a soft, cool cloth, he caressed her face, shoulders, chest. Her legs and hips were wet, but the sharp, rough waves kept roiling through her. "Push, my dear," the doctor said, "push, push, push," and she did, swirling down into darkness.
When she swam again to the surface, Doctor Barry laid a tiny bundle in her arms. He had been there every time, for each of the boys, and he knew what she was waiting to hear. "A girl," he said, "a girl to comfort you."
Caroline looked for Amos, but he had gone. Just her, alone with the doctor and this new creature, this girl. Doctor Barry steadied her shoulder and slid two pillows behind her. She pulled the thin blanket back from the baby’s face. Wisps of hair, no color. Blue of eyes. She unwrapped the blanket further. Fingers like curled tendrils of sweet peas. Dimpled elbows. Fragile chest, tiny ribs rising with each breath. Naked downy thighs and the sweet declivity between them. At last a daughter. At last.
She must tell Aunt Miriam, she thought, and then she slept. When she woke, Amos was there again, and the three boys. Amos hovered near the bed. The boys stood back, restless and uncomfortable by the door.
"Is the baby all right?" Amos asked. She nodded yes. "And you?" he added, almost tenderly.
Amos was not a tender man. He did whatever needed doing. He loved his sons. He worked the farm. He milked the cows, trimmed the horse's hooves and curried the dried mud from his chestnut coat. All that he did quietly, carefully, but not tenderly.
Caroline touched his hand. "Do you want to hold her?" He stepped away from the bed. How many babies had he held before, the three sons, even the two stillborn, yet he was never sure with holding them, as if he feared his rough, farmer’s hands might let the babies fall or rip their translucent skin.
"It’s a girl, Amos. You know how I wanted a girl." She knew, too, that he had wanted another son to work with him.
Then the boys came forward, hesitant, turning their eyes away from her. First Arthur, the oldest, thin and tall, pale-haired like his father, a quiet, careful son. "You cried so loud, Mama. Even in the barn we heard you."
"I was dreaming of glaciers, and look what they have brought." Arthur leaned to squint at the baby. "I was rolling across the earth and the earth was rolling through me," she told him, but saw that he did not understand her, or did not want to understand. And how could he, just a boy of eleven? None of them would want to know about a woman’s body, not even Amos.
"Mama, is there anything we can get you?" Arthur asked.
"A cup of water, please?" While he was gone from the room, the younger boys, Stephen and Donald, tiptoed forward, touched the blanket wrapped around the baby, stepped shyly back.
The baby woke and rooted with her pink mouth against Caroline’s shoulder. "Help me sit a little taller, Amos, and I can nurse her." Amos took hold of her arms, settled her back against the pillows with his sure, wide hands, and then, with just two fingers, stroked—lightly and only for a moment—the baby’s silken head. Exhausted, joyful, close to tears, Caroline leaned into his caring.
Arthur returned, held the cup of water for her, then slipped out with his brothers. Amos stayed. "What will we call her?" he asked.
Caroline’s mother had been a Sarah, Amos’ too, though everyone had called her Sally. Caroline knew, had always known, that a daughter would be named Sarah. Amos knew it too, so when she told him, he just nodded and stood wordless while she guided Saree to her breast.
~ 2 ~
The Shell farm was perfect, small, only eighty acres, but perfect because it offered everything a farmer might need. Caroline was only thirty, a quiet woman, lithe, quick- moving, strong enough for the outdoor work she loved. She had been born on this farm and lived her entire life here. The farm was her home, her history, her Eden.
She knew every inch of the land. Along the northwest edge of the property, a low, wide shelf of exposed granite sloped into well-drained pastureland, hayfields, and cultivated land. The glaciers had been generous, leaving rounded drumlins of sand and gravel, hills on which a house and barn could perch; leaving the stones, so many stones closely scattered, for building the walls that enclosed cows, horses, orchard, and kept out—or slowed at least—the fox, deer, bobcat, or winter’s drifting snow.
The stone walls were four feet high, sometimes five, and almost as deep below the ground, their bases below the frost line. Long before Caroline was born, her ancestors had begun the walls, and every farmer af