At first, Chris Buckley was simply warned. And watched. But as Chris unravels the haunting riddles of the town of Solitary, he finds that much more than the life of a town is at stake. Whether facing a pastor with a house full of skeletons or a cousin he never knew existed, Chris is forced to choose between light and darkness, life and nightmarish death. Every choice he makes reminds him that the unthinkable has already happened—and if he trusts the wrong person, it may happen again. This second book in the Solitary Tales continues Chris’s journey toward finding out who he is and what his own role is in the darkness suffocating his tiny new hometown. Filled with shocking twists, Gravestone is a tale of a teenager thrown into a battle over a town, a secret—and ultimately his own soul.
"Here lyes Buried the Body of MARTHA PERONNEAU...Departed This Life December Ye 14th 1746 Aged 13 Years." Such an inscription was typical of 18th century grave markers in Charleston, South Carolina. Many epitaphs went on to reveal much more about the deceased: personality, religious beliefs, career accomplishments and social position. Attention to social matters was a natural part of life in Charleston, where descendants of the city's 17th century British founders sought to recreate the class-conscious culture of aristocratic England. The merging of this culture with influences from French Huguenots, German Lutherans, Scottish Presbyterians and Spanish Jews led to funeral practices unique in the American colonies. Focusing on pieces created between 1695 and 1802, this volume offers a detailed examination of the tombstones and grave markers from 18th century Charleston. It discusses not only the general trends and the symbolism of the period's gravestone art--such as skulls, portraits, ascending souls and stylized vegetation--but also examines specific instances of these popular motifs. Tombstones from Charleston's oldest and most significant churches, including the Circular Congregational Church, St. Philip's Anglican Church, the French Huguenot Church and the First (Scots) Presbyterian Church, are explored in detail. The work looks at how Charleston gravestones differed from funerary art elsewhere in the American colonies and reveals them to be some of the earliest examples of American sculpture. A guide to colonial gravestone symbols and a glossary of relevant Latin terms are also included.
The feature film Sweet Land was based on this short story about a Norwegian American farmer and his German immigrant common-law bride. Excerpted from Sweet Land: New and Selected Stories.
Gravestone Chronicles I includes insightful essays and new scholarship on eighteenth-century New England gravestone carvers and their art. (An every-name, every-place index to both books is included in Volume II.).
The graveyards of old New England hold an incredible range of poetic messages in the epitaphs etched into the gravestones, each a profound expression of emotion, culture, religion, and literature. These epitaphs are old, but their themes are timeless: mourning and faith, grief and hope, loss, and memory. This book tells the story of a years-long walk among gravestones and shares insights gained along the way. It identifies the source texts and authors chosen for these stones; interprets something of the tastes and beliefs of the people who did the choosing; offers some hypotheses on the various ways these texts were accessible to readers in remote towns and villages; gives a brief summary of the religious context of the times; and reflects on how the language and literature chosen for these epitaphs express these peoples' conflicted and evolving attitudes towards life, death, and eternity.
The use of engraved sculptural or painted images was a pagan practice, hesitantly adopted by the earliest Christians, who had to transform the old mythological symbols in order to express suitably the meanings of their new religion.
"Here lyes Buried the Body of MARTHA PERONNEAU...Departed This Life December Ye 14th 1746 Aged 13 Years." Such an inscription was typical of 18th century grave markers in Charleston, South Carolina. Many epitaphs went on to reveal much more about the deceased: personality, religious beliefs, career accomplishments and social position. Attention to social matters was a natural part of life in Charleston, where descendants of the city's 17th century British founders sought to recreate the class-conscious culture of aristocratic England. The merging of this culture with influences from French Huguenots, German Lutherans, Scottish Presbyterians and Spanish Jews led to funeral practices unique in the American colonies. Focusing on pieces created between 1695 and 1802, this volume offers a detailed examination of the tombstones and grave markers from 18th century Charleston. It discusses not only the general trends and the symbolism of the period's gravestone art--such as skulls, portraits, ascending souls and stylized vegetation--but also examines specific instances of these popular motifs. Tombstones from Charleston's oldest and most significant churches, including the Circular Congregational Church, St. Philip's Anglican Church, the French Huguenot Church and the First (Scots) Presbyterian Church, are explored in detail. The work looks at how Charleston gravestones differed from funerary art elsewhere in the American colonies and reveals them to be some of the earliest examples of American sculpture. A guide to colonial gravestone symbols and a glossary of relevant Latin terms are also included.
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth". So decrees the second commandment. Could anything be clearer? And yet, through the centuries, Jews have decorated their tombstones with graven images. This rich tradition of liberally interpreting the biblical admonition has provided centuries' worth of graphic symbols and motifs that illuminate Jewish history and lore. In Graven Images, a surprisingly spirited view of a usually somber subject, author and photographer Arnold Schwartzman has assembled a lavish array of color photographs of Jewish tombstones. Focusing on the treasures he has discovered in thirty-eight European cemeteries, this book reproduces more than two hundred graven images from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Romania. Schwartzman's beautiful close-up photographs and fascinating captions reveal the significance of some of the most common images found on the gravestones. Some reveal the occupation of the deceased (an inkwell and quill for a scribe) or something about character (a candelabrum for a pious woman). Others allude specifically to a person's name (a fish for a member of the Fischel family) or refer to biblical tradition (Noah's ark, Adam and Eve in the Garden). The book begins with a riveting essay by Chaim Potok, the renowned novelist and Jewish thinker, who asks: "How in the light of all these images are we to understand the second commandment?" A unique assemblage of what Schwartzman has called "hallowed milestones that plot the course of the Jewish diaspora", GravenImages will appeal to everyone interested in Jewish history, symbols, and tradition.
The Nebraska Sandhills hold a dark secret from the Twenties. Two elderly women unknowingly share common bonds. Elma Slaymaker, living at Hidden Pines, still guards knowledge she can never reveal about Dile Hartgrave and Gladyce Hartgrave McFarland now a resident at the Ainsley nursing home, mourning her brother Dile's death for years, is compelled to get a gravestone marker for him before she dies. Dile was killed in 1926 on a Sandhills homestead when he was eighteen picking corn in the late evening for the Slaymaker family under decidedly suspicious circumstances. When the nursing home takes Gladyce to see about the marker, she is told there is no record of her brother's burial in the family plot which holds eight. If Dile is there, there are nine bodies interred there. In the burial records, where his name should be is a stranger's name that she does not recognize. Gladyce determines that he must have been a distant cousin. She realizes in horror that her suspicions of long ago may be correct. Her brother Dile was murdered. They tell her she can put a marker up, but she cannot change the records. They will remain as they are. The courthouse burned down in the fifties, and there are no records there. Several newspapers state he was buried where Gladyce insists Dile was. When Ann Marie and her husband Ed are summoned to her dying mother Gladyce's bedside, they are concerned but find they are needed for much more. Gladyce wants them to "Dig the bodies up." They visit the old homestead to investigate and to see where it happened. It appears they are hitting their heads against a stone wall. Still, Ann Marie promises her mother they will find out what they can and make sure Dile gets his headstone marker.
