



Stones from the River
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times).
Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar.
Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s ambitious for a single novel to tackle the subjects of physical difference and the Holocaust, but Stones from the River pulls it off. Born in a small German village during World War I, Trudi is marked as an outsider by dwarfism, but it also grants her the gift of resilience and an uncommon compassion for her country’s persecuted Jews. Coming of age just as the Nazis rise to power, Trudi goes on a journey to find herself that is both harrowing and uplifting. With heartbreaking sensitivity, German-born author Ursula Hegi pulls us deep into Trudi’s isolation and her incredible emotional growth. Hegi finds redemption in unexpected places, just as Trudi finds it in herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Returning to Burgdorf, the small German community she memorably depicted in Floating in My Mother's Palm , Hegi captures the events and atmosphere in the country prior, during and after WW II. Again she has produced a powerful novel whose chilling candor and resonant moral vision serve a dramatic story. With a sure hand, Hegi evokes the patterns of small-town life, individualized here in dozens of ordinary people who display the German passion for order, obedience and conformity, enforced for centuries by rigid class differences and the strictures of the Catholic church. The protagonist is Trudi Montag, the Zwerg (dwarf) who becomes the town's librarian; (she and most of the other characters figured in the earlier book). A perennial outsider because of her deformity, Trudi exploits her gift for eliciting peoples' secrets--and often maliciously reveals them in suspenseful gossip. But when Hitler ascends to power, she protects those who have been kind to her, including two Jewish families who, despite the efforts of Trudi, her father and a few others, are fated to perish in the Holocaust. Trudi is a complex character, as damaged by her mother's madness and early death as she is by the later circumstances of her life, and she is sometimes cruel, vindictive and vengeful. It is fascinating to watch her mature, as she experiences love and loss and finds wisdom, eventually learning to live with the vast amnesia that grips formerly ardent Nazis after the war. One hopes that Hegi will continue to depict the residents of Burgdorf--Germany in microcosm--thus deepening our understanding of a time and place.
Customer Reviews
Stones from the River
I’ve read and re-read this book and each time was pulled in and enjoying the smooth dance Hegi spins this novel. The characters in this novel are memorable as Trudy, herself. DMSM
Fantastic Read~!
I highly recommend this book. :)