Stone By Stone
The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls
Robert M. Thorson
Winner of the Connecticut Book Award in Nonfiction
There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America’s Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. Even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story—about how New England was formed—and in Robert Thorson’s hands they live and breathe.
“The stone wall is the key that links the natural history and human history of New England,” Thorson writes. Millions of years ago, New England’s stones belonged to ancient mountains thrust up by prehistoric collisions between continents. During the Ice Age, pieces were cleaved off by glaciers and deposited—often hundreds of miles away—when the glaciers melted. Buried again over centuries by forest and soil buildup, the stones gradually worked their way back to the surface, only to become impediments to the farmers cultivating the land in the eighteenth century, who piled them into “linear landfills,” a place to hold the stones.
Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.
Published by Bloomsbury USA
Praise for Stone By Stone
…an open invitation to head into the country oneself and explore a stone wall. — Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe
Thorson is a fine writer, a scientist with the sensibility of a poet. —The Providence Sunday Journal Yielding plentiful insights about New England’s signature stone walls, geologist Thorson’s scientific treatment deepens appreciation of them as more than quaint artifacts. …. An enlightening excursion that goes well beyond the romantic notions surrounding the walls. —Booklist
