Old Stones

Old Stones is an emotional dive into a family shaped by class, background and war.

After years of wondering why her mother seemed so different from other moms, author A. S. Penne set out to explore her background. Behind the search was a "niggling feeling" that, despite her Canadian nationality, perhaps England was her 'real' home.

At the end of WW II, Penne's mother left her English homeland to rejoin a badly-injured and already-repatriated new husband.  The rough Atlantic crossing heightened her anxiety and anticipation about life in a foreign land with a war-scarred husband.  But Elizabeth was an adventurer, another of the 50,000 war brides who emigrated from Britain and Europe bringing a different lifestyle and culture to her new world.  The generation of children from those wartime unions inherited dual legacies that made 'home' a difficult place to define.

Penne embarks on an up-close and personal journey to investigate the abandonment of her mother's upper-class background for a very working-class life with a Canadian RCAF pilot. Through a series of interviews with her parents and careful readings of old documents and letters, the author probes the story of a marriage that almost ended in tragedy before it began.

In the end, Penne does indeed find home, but in a place she least expects it.