A Novel by Michael Aaron Rockland

Stones is a novel that takes place in one day—except for a brief final chapter. It concerns the relationship between a middle aged man and his aged mother as they make their annual visit to the graves of their family in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island. The occupants of those graves are also key actors in the book. The title “Stones” has three meanings: first it refers to the tombstones in the various cemeteries the two main characters visit.; second, it refers to the stones they place on these tombstones as a symbol of  their visit according to Jewish custom. Finally, it refers to a psychological or moral stone the man has long carried within him, a sense that he has not made of his life what he had once hoped he would. In the penultimate chapter he realizes startling things about his family—hinted at earlier—which may now serve to liberate him and set him on his original life course. Serious as it is, it is also a comic novel, and there is much rich humor in it.