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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wood (Perfect Harmony) pulls off an unlikely feat
with this sweeping epic about the history of humanity, from the first
Homo sapiens to 20th-century Californians. At the novel's center is a
blue crystal, a fragment from a meteorite that fell to earth some three
million years ago. The crystal is first discovered by a girl on the African
plain 100,000 years ago; when the "water stone" seems to save
her mother from illness, the girl's stature in her community changes and
so does the fate of her descendants.
As the crystal is passed down through the generations,
Wood crafts vivid sketches of ordinary women who triumph over a prescribed
destiny. A Roman noblewoman disobeys her husband and finds her own salvation;
an 11th-century English prioress struggles against an abbot to save her
monastery; a girl from a 16th-century German hamlet heads to the Near
East to find her father and becomes part of the sultan's harem; a plantation
wife in 18th-century Martinique saves her estate from marauding pirates.
At last sighting, the blue stone is "in a place called Woodstock,
wired into the handle of a marijuana roach clip owned by a hippy [sic]
named Argyle." Some stories are predictable, but Wood packs them
with historical details that should keep readers interested. ("When
her brothers came to visit, they greeted her, as all Roman male relatives
greeted their kinswoman, by kissing her on both cheeks. This was not a
gesture of affection, but rather a covert way to detect wine on a woman's
breath"). (Jan.)
THE BLESSING STONE
By Barbara Wood
St Martin's Press (464 pp)
$25.95
January 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-27534-X
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