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Between Stone and Sky

ebook / ISBN-13: 9781472127310

Price: £10.99

ON SALE: 17th May 2018

Genre: Biography & True Stories / Memoirs

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‘This is a book about the stories we tell ourselves and one woman’s determination to make hers true’ Spectator

‘A fresh . . . heartfelt book that . . . makes you want to throw away your mobile, run for the hills and learn a traditional craft’ The Lady

‘A spirited defence of manual labour’ TLS

At the age of twenty-six, Whitney Brown met a dry-stone waller. Within weeks she was out on the hill with him in Wales, learning the language of dry-stone walling. Far away from the pressures of her old life, she found deep satisfaction in working with her hands, in the age and heft of the stones, and the ring of the hammer.

Out under the open sky, Whitney relished every sore muscle and smashed finger, opportunity to stand atop a wall she’d just built and feel like the strongest woman alive.

Between Stone and Sky is a celebration of the raw and rugged splendour of the Welsh countryside and the enduring beauty and relevance of traditional craftsmanship. It is an unflinchingly honest account of the emotional struggle to become and belong. Most of all, it is an empowering story of female friendship, accepting uncertainty and risk, and crossing oceans in pursuit of dreams.

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Reviews

This beautiful memoir really got under my skin
Jenny Tattersall, Cogito Books, Guardian Travel
Confessional, heartfelt . . . memoir . . . adventure and intrigue aplenty . . . this is a book about the stories we tell ourselves and one woman's determination to make hers true. Triumphant and tragic in equal measure, Brown's story is the American dream for the millennial generation
Spectator
A fresh . . . heartfelt book that . . . makes you want to throw away your mobile, run for the hills and learn a traditional craft
Rebecca Wallersteiner, The Lady
A spirited defence of manual labour
Rebecca Foster, Times Literary Supplement
Refreshingly funny . . . wonderful . . . Brown's writing about the Welsh countryside, and the Welsh people, is particularly colourful; she captures their earthy warmth brilliantly with her outsider's eye. The details about walling are also fascinating and empowering: as a woman working on the land, Brown writes powerfully about the feminist emancipation she experiences . . . But the woman Brown gets to know best in this multi-textured memoir is herself, as she encourages us to find ourselves, in all weathers, in the open air
Jude Rogers, BBC Countryfile