Stone Creek: A Novel

The book arrived promptly and in the condition it was listed as. This book was an awesome read!!

I just finished "Stone Creek," and it's one of those books you wish would never end. There is an underlying sadness in the characters, but love runs through the story and makes this a very pleasurable read.

Victoria Lustbader expertly looks at grief, love, loneliness, identity issues and passionate sex, and how these might intertwine, in STONE CREEK, an escapist page-turner that will be in more than a few beach bags this summer. Lustbader comes to her second novel with experience. As a former fiction editor and the wife of novelist Eric Van Lustbader, she intimately knows the mechanics of writing a novel. This book reads smoothly from cover to cover. The story is set in the well-rendered fictional small town of Stone Creek, 70 miles northwest of New York City, a place she does a solid job sketching out for the reader. But it's the characters, not the place, that are the heart and soul of this novel. Danny Malloy is the attractive young widower and construction worker who married out of his class and whose grieving mother-in-law, Eve Jamison, won't let him forget it. As the story opens, it's been almost a year since his wife Tara died, and Danny finds it is all he can do to take care of his five-year-old son Caleb and make it through another day. Lustbader employs the oft-used device of a journal left behind by the deceased wife Tara as a method of filling in some historical blanks for the readers about Danny and Tara, and their passionate love for each other. It's a bit of a clichéd device, but it works. Danny's life is about to intersect with Lily Spencer, a beautiful 46-year-old woman with everything money can buy. But she's suffering from boredom and feels distant from her husband Paul, a 54-year-old workaholic corporate lawyer. They've been married nine years and are childless, a condition that is unpacked more thoroughly as the novel unfolds. Paul is a likable man prone to thoughtful gestures who has overcome his past as an unloved adopted son and strives to achieve. Lustbader makes him more than the easy cookie-cutter character, however, and it's hard for readers to dislike or dismiss him. I particularly liked this description of Paul: "He sets his sights on something or someone and most of the time he gets what he's after. And if he doesn't get what he's after, he stops wanting it. It's a trick he taught himself...." Eve, the mother-in-law you'd love to hate, is in fact impossible to hate because of the multifaceted way Lustbader portrays her character. Eve is anxious, angry, grieving, and feels a tremendous sense of guilt over an action in her past that later will shed light on her hatred of Danny. Her influence on Caleb threatens the peace that Danny and his son carved out after Caleb's mother's death. Although it takes a bit of getting used to, the present tense narration lends a sense of urgency to the story. Each character's motivations are gradually unveiled by Lustbader, as the tale moves to its unexpected conclusion. The complicated relationships between different people keep the tension high as the novel progresses. For Lily, her life, however wonderful it looks on the outside, is just not enough. She needs to find herself, and

This is a great summer read. With compassionate, loving and warm characters, Ms. Lustbader's soothing voice is a gentle guiding hand as the novel journeys through two strangers grieving loss. Lustbader examines the many facets of love and human relationships from male/female and adult to child points of view. Set in smalltown upstate New York, Lily spends a summer at Stone Creek while her powerful, workaholic husband, Paul, is home in New York City. Their once passionate marriage, has fizzled somewhat under the weight of Lily's childless sadness. While Lily is a vulnerable character, you get the sense of a quiet, penetrating power within her. One that Danny (ten years younger) rugged, sexy, outdoorsy thirty-something widower is drawn to and they form a very realistic and compassionate bond. Danny's son Caleb is swept up by Lily, too. It's well done and there are some nice moments between even the minor characters. Get tissues ready.

'... which is worse - to lose something vital that you have had, or to have never had it at all...' Stone Creek is about love, passion, forgiving, emptiness in the heart, sex and parenthood. Mrs Lustbader had to have lived `Stone Creek' to write about it so honestly. This is a great book, one that didn't leave me indifferent to the solitude felt by a woman that has it all.