A Single Stone
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Jena — strong, respected, reliable — is the leader of the line, a job every girl in the village dreams of. Watched over by the Mothers as one of the chosen seven, Jena's years spent denying herself food and wrapping her limbs have paid off. She is small enough to squeeze through the tunnels of the mountain and gather the harvest, risking her life with each mission. No work is more important. This has always been the way of things, even if it isn’t easy. But as her suspicions mount and Jena begins to question the life she’s always known, the cracks in her world become impossible to ignore. Thought-provoking and quietly complex, Meg McKinlay’s novel unfolds into a harshly beautiful tale of belief, survival, and resilience stronger than stone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping story, first published in Australia, unearths the sinister underpinnings of an isolated matriarchal society. A catastrophic event known as "Rockfall" created a sealed community ruled by "the Mothers" and dependent on the harvest of mica to survive the winters. Jena, a steely 14-year-old, holds elevated status as the gifted leader of the line of tiny girls who tunnel into the rock's crevices to locate the precious mineral. The claustrophobia inherent in this walled-off world is further heightened as Jena awakens to the gruesome practices that the Mothers employ to breed ever more waiflike miners, including those that are already out in the open ("In the mountain, in the dark, it didn't matter what you looked like. It didn't matter whether you had been more into your smallness or helped along by the knife, by the careful breaking and compression of your bones"). McKinlay (Below) believably evokes the dangers inherent in Jena's burgeoning autonomous thoughts and actions in a tightly controlled dystopian environment where her grace and power ultimately prevail. Ages 10 up.
