Stony Kill

After the sudden death of her mother, Joss Ryckman finds herself running away from everything—the life she did not choose of managing the family bakery in Brooklyn, the troubled relationship with her sometimes violent father, and her conflicts with Wyatt, a lover who always wants more. But when she flees to the country farm of her childhood in upstate New York, will she finally find the truth of dark events in her family’s past? Or will all that she has held at bay for twenty years come crashing down? As Joss comes to terms with her loss, she is forced to confront memories of a childhood steeped in both joy and sorrow. As the past seeps in through the rich farmland and the landscape of the treacherous, churning Stony Kill, Piecing together the broken past and her family’s dysfunction, the dark secrets of a family submerged in a history of violence and regret begin to take shape, and the reality of two brutal killings can no longer be denied. Joss must make her own choices and, ultimately, let go.Rich with beautiful language and immersed in powerful descriptions of Joss’s feelings, Stony Kill tells a powerful story of the heartbreak and suffering from violent acts of a dysfunctional family, and ultimately  her hope and choice of a better life.

Marie White Small of Bennington, VT A secret writer from a pragmatic blue-collar neighborhood, Marie White Small brings her skills as a florist, waitress, antiquarian bookseller, bookbinder, cook, and pie baker to the page. She studied at the Center for the Book Arts in NYC and was the founder and moderator of a community literary critique group, North Gotham Fiction Writers, for ten years. Ms. Small is currently the writer-in-residence at aVermont mountain-top writer’s retreat. She has published short fiction in the anthology, Southshire Pepper-Pot (Lion’s Mark Press, 2007). Stony Kill is her debut novel.  She and her family, along with two willful cats, live in Bennington, Vermont.