Reed Among the Stones

About the Book

Three families have lived forever beside the Mother River, the Stone folk, Reeds and the Bee cousins from the red hillside where flowers bloom. They are at peace until slave raiders come from across the mountains. Brother Snow of the Stones rises to the challenge and is caught up in a war not of his making. He is wounded and as he lies between the present world and infinity he remembers his life, loves and struggles.

Snow's grandmother, his widowed father and his foster sister Rain of the Reed folk come alive as we learn the myths and magics of this long forgotten people. Will Snow be forced to marry Rain, binding Reeds and Stones in treaty kinship as the elders demand or will he marry Scythe, his mysterious first love? His answer is not at all one for a modern man, yet it fits what we know of his culture and time.

Will the mysterious Axe men from beyond the mountains end Snow's people, selling them into slavery, or will corrupt influences from within their group weaken them to the point where they destroy themselves? Or will the Stone folk continue to weave their tapestry of destiny, myth and psychic wholeness to overcome hardship and death?

Snow's story ends with resolution as complex and allusions as deep as the fragmentary carvings we sometimes find in the bogs and ancient gravesites of the European countryside.

About the Author

Mr. Stanford lives in a log cabin beside a meadow deep in the Alabama hills with his wife and two large dogs plus an elderly cat named Sunflower. He makes glass beads, casts an occasional metal figurine, and collects fossils. He is especially fond of Appalachian music, coon dogs who bay in the dark night skies, mules, persimmons and good country people. He recalls a former co-worker's words, "There's not going to be any telephones in heaven, nor fax machines either," and hopes to find a place further out of town. This is Stanford's first novel, but he has three more in the writing process. The next one in print will either be a sequel telling more about the Stone folk and the Axe men or a southern novel stripped of many of that genre's overworked plot devices.