A Heart of Stone

Growing up with her adored siblings in a rambling house in Holland — out of which her parents run an American news-clipping service — clever, precocious Ellen has an idyllic childhood suffused with Americana. Then, on her twelfth birthday, family disaster strikes, shattering her carefree life. Twenty-five years later, Ellen returns and plunges into the past as she leafs through a faded photo album and confronts the literal and figurative ghosts of her childhood. Seamlessly alternating the past and present, taut with Hitchcockian tension and warmed by a redemptive love story, A Heart of Stone is a wise and memorable novel.