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  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF E. B. MOORE

  STONES IN THE ROAD

  “Complex characters, vividly rendered details, and a story line filled with page-turning plot twists combine to create a compelling read. The reader will be riveted as both mother and son, separated by a tragic event, search for wholeness, redemption, and forgiveness as they face their own demons. The novel celebrates the enduring strength of family bonds even as it explores their darker side. A powerful and perceptive novel, Stones in the Road is a true odyssey of the heart.”

  —Amy Belding Brown, author of Flight of the Sparrow

  “What an extraordinary achievement this novel is. The journey, both literal and metaphorical, of a boy into manhood engages the reader every step of the way. I couldn’t stop reading and felt I lived the experience with Joshua as he learned the limits of freedom and explored the complexities of the heart. Brava.”

  —Jeanne Mackin, author of The Beautiful American

  “Written with poetry, a pitch-perfect ear for detail, and dark humor, Stones in the Road is a story about perseverance and the ties that bind a family through grief and hardship, across distance and time. You’ll fall in love with young Joshua and follow him anywhere. Take this journey in Moore’s lyric tale and you too will find your way home.”

  —Ann Bauer, author of Forgiveness 4 You

  “I love this book. What a joy to dwell in E. B. Moore’s flawless prose, to benefit from her unflinching insights into Amish culture and into human nature, most of all. Part adventure, part family drama, part coming-of-age, Stones in the Road is both muscular and sensitive, and is not to be missed.”

  —Robin Black, author of Life Drawing

  “In spare and psalmlike prose, E. B. Moore expertly transports the reader on an epic yet intimate journey through the harrowing terrain of nineteenth-century America. This is an absorbing and satisfying read from an assured historical novelist.”

  —Christopher Castellani, author of All This Talk of Love

  “This harrowing tale about an Amish family torn apart by alcohol and loss grabs the reader from the first sentence. A haunting, intense novel with powerful characters, this beautiful book will linger with you long after you read the last page.”

  —Linda K. Wertheimer, author of Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance

  AN UNSEEMLY WIFE

  “This lilting, image-filled first novel by poet E. B. Moore . . . shifts seamlessly among time periods . . . heart-wrenching and satisfying.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Moore’s tale of hardship and survival takes up classic Western themes but adds in Amish heritage as an intriguing twist . . . full of warm, descriptive language, quaint terminology (such as ‘littles’ for children), and fresh, folksy metaphors. A worthwhile literary contribution to the popular Amish-fiction subgenre.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “E. B. Moore writes unflinchingly of life on the trail. . . . The characters, based on real people, are very well defined.

  —Open Book Society

  “E. B. Moore’s An Unseemly Wife is absolutely top-notch historical fiction, illuminating as if with rays of sun an American landscape as cruel as it is lush, as harsh as it is hopeful. This story of Ruth and her Amish family’s westward migration is an emigrant tale with a twist that will wring your heart—you’ll never, ever forget it. I couldn’t look away from this novel, and its characters will live with me always. An absolutely beautiful, harrowing book.”

  —Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of The Stormchasers and Those Who Save Us

  “An Unseemly Wife is one of those rare novels of beauty and darkness, transfixing us with a place few can imagine and a narrator as fierce as she is true. Ruth’s journey may emerge from another century, but her failures in faith and love are our own—as are her triumphs. E. B. Moore creates a world with the slightest strokes of a pen, and the story’s ghosts will remain with you long after you close the book.”

  —Michelle Hoover, author of The Quickening

  “An Unseemly Wife is a disquieting tale of dreams and delusions, community and separation, loyalty and betrayal. Ultimately, Ruth is a survivor among survivors: a woman who, despite the seismic shifts in her world, stands tenaciously at her own center.”

  —Kathy Leonard Czepiel, author of A Violet Season

  “In An Unseemly Wife, E. B. Moore walks the rare tightrope of artistry, writing this harrowing and gripping novel with exquisite care and detail, putting into sharp relief the story of an Amish family crossing the country by wagon.

  —Randy Susan Meyers, national bestselling author of Accidents of Marriage

  “A story of one woman’s strength in adversity, will to survive, and perseverance.”

  —News and Sentinel (Parkersburg, WV)

  “[The] journey with its losses and triumphs is symbolic of so many who became part of the westward expansion of America’s borders. E. B. Moore depicts it so well and gives the reader a wonderful read in the process!”

  —The Best Reviews

  ALSO BY E. B. MOORE

  An Unseemly Wife

  New American Library

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  First Printing, October 2015

  Copyright © Elizabeth Bradley Moore, 2015

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House LLC, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Moore, E. B. (Elizabeth B.)

  Stones in the road/E. B. Moore.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-15778-1

  1. Young men—Fiction. 2. Amish—History—19th century—Fiction.

  3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.O5553S76 2015

  813’.6—dc23 2015013929

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by E.B. Moore

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART II

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  PART III

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  To my mother, who kept the old stories alive, and for my children, Brad, Cally, and Sarah Moriarty, may they pass down stories of their own.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am ever grateful: to Alice Tasman at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency for her continued belief in my stories, and to Tracy Bernstein at New American Library, who dared sign up for my second novel sight unseen. With vision and tact, she encouraged me to dig deeper levels within an expanded plot.

  To my constant first reader, Priscilla Fales; my children, Brad, Cally, and Sarah Moriarty; and “All-body,” the group of vacationing friends, for ignoring my immersion in writing at the expense of swimming the frigid Maine waters, beaching, card playing, Ping-Pong, and pool.

  To my treasured whole-novel group, for their loving commitment to my future, for their devotion to craft, and for the fortitude to read and reread whole drafts on demand: Nichole Bernier, Kathy Crowley, Juliette Fay, and Randy Susan Meyers.

  To the many people at the Joiner Center, especially those in my long-term poetry group who saw this book through
its narrative poem stage: Susan Nisenbaum Becker, Ann Killough, Frannie Lindsay, and Christine Tierney.

  To the many at Grub Street Writers, starting with Jenna Blum, who lured the long poem into its current permutation, and to the Novel Incubator community for their unending support.

  To my weekly Cambridge Writers, who continue to hold my feet to the fire, seven pages at a time: Lallie Lloyd, Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo, Louise Olson, Deb Peeples, and Sandra Shuman.

  To the Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo for uninterrupted writing time peppered with delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner I didn’t have to prepare or clean up.

  To my copy editor, Michele Alpern, for her sharp eye catching grammar slips, my disastrous spelling, and occasional time warps.

  And finally, I’m indebted to friends and strangers who have bought An Unseemly Wife and taken the time to rate and write reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and social media of all sorts. For you, my grateful thanks, and I hope you enjoy Stones in the Road.

  One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.

  —Ecclesiastes 1:4

  PART I

  The Road

  CHAPTER 1

  The Graveyard

  Joshua urges his horse through the iron gate. Hoping to find his father’s headstone, he dismounts at one slab not yet covered with lichen and reads the name. It’s not Father’s. He reads it again. Hand to his beard, he compresses his lips. The name is his own.

  He never imagined this welcome, or the chiseled inscription: Beloved Boy, 1872. The year he ran from Father and the farm.

  Beyond disquiet, he lingers on the hill overlooking his family’s stone house and white barn, the rebuilt woodshed, all at peace as it should be, no hint of demolishing flames. Only birdsong greets him, and air fresh with the tang of falling leaves.

  Quiet surrounds him, the shouting over long ago.

  He lets himself revel in the spread of quilted fields, this Amish land woven into the chambers of his heart along with Mama and his sisters. They draw him, but he stays in the graveyard. His horse crops the grass.

  A runaway no more, after ten years and six thousand miles, he has returned ragged in brown castoffs, his beard matted. He shakes off hesitation.

  Gathering the reins, he girds himself against Father, the Deacon of their Plain Fold, the one who propelled him, eleven and alone, into the arms of English.

  In their Gomorrahs Joshua resisted what frightened him most: the advent of hate. Yet try as he might, he fell from grace, another man’s blood on his hands.

  At twenty-one, he has come to reclaim the boy he once was. He wants to earn the Plain jacket, pants, and hat, black as Mama’s blackberry jam. He wants his family. But first comes Father. Face-to-face.

  CHAPTER 2

  Where the Road Began

  Tucked in his narrow bed, Joshua listened to Father slam through the kitchen. Father, back from prayer in the barn, head full of God; on his breath the liquid of visions, the smell sharp as a snake’s tongue.

  As if in the room, Joshua saw him, smelled him, coming through the dark. Father but not Father, shoulders hunched, wet hair streaming into his collar, dripping off his square beard. His boots squelched with rain, and he kicked the logs stacked for the morning fire. Joshua heard them roll onto the hearth, and, clang, the iron fork fell on stone. A great clomping followed. Father kicked at the oak table. Its legs chattered along wide-board floors. He tripped into the parlor, shoved a straight chair, and lurched to the steps. Stomp on the first—stomp, the second—his knee hit the third. Slap, slap, his hands on the sixth, the seventh, he dog-paddled to the landing.

  Joshua knew the sounds. He’d seen Father, how he would slide his bulk up the wall, shoulder first, legs wobbly, pushing himself up the last steps to the hall.

  “Isaac.” Father’s voice hoarse. “Where are you?” More and more nights, he wasn’t himself, and Father called Joshua Isaac, though he’d been Joshua all his eleven years.

  Pulling a patchwork quilt over his head, Joshua prayed, Please, please, let me be but a mote in his eye, ever hopeful that this time Father would stagger past the door. But he paused. His boots regrouped at the top step.

  Silence. Then, along the wall, Father’s hand slid toward the bedroom. Joshua peered from under the quilt. Father pushed the door and pawed the opening. A waft of manure filled the room, and big as a tree, he toppled onto the bedside.

  He sank to his knees. “God.” Father struck the mattress, his left fist a finger’s width from Joshua’s head, his breath a slap. The bed shook. Joshua inched to the farthest edge, belly to his backbone, eyes squinched.

  Father wept. “Dear God . . .”

  And it seemed God answered, as He would, Father being Deacon.

  “Yes,” Father said. He and God agreed. They were as one, and Joshua less than crumbs under their table. He knew because Father had told him often enough. Crumbs. Though he strove to be the whole loaf Father wanted, a slice would have done.

  Breathing heavily, Father gripped Joshua’s shoulder, raised one knee, and, dragging his boot beneath him, heaved to his feet. He yanked Joshua’s arm, the shoulder fit to pop, and hauled him off the bed, his legs tangled in the quilt.

  At the end of the hall, Father took the steps two at a time, Joshua’s bare feet bumping the treads, down, down, through parlor and kitchen, his knees cracking against chair legs, the table leg, and out the door into the blowing rain.

  Father had him by the hair, head pressed against Father’s jacket sharp with sweat and the stench of wet wool. Joshua’s nightshirt clinging like a second skin, they splashed across the dooryard.

  Wild with what might come, he drove his heels into the mud, plowing crooked furrows. “Oh please,” he whispered.

  Father wrenched him toward the woodshed. Joshua yowled. Luke yowled in return, the black dog latched in the toolshed.

  Luke, Joshua’s confidant, a ready ear those nights after Father beat him in the woodshed. “Why does he hate me?” he’d ask as he curled on the dog’s bed, and the dog would lick his face.

  Luke whined and scratched against his confinement, until Father, dragging Joshua, slammed the woodshed door, the world shut out.

  One-handed, Father pushed aside the chopping block, an oak stump with the hatchet whacked in the end-grain. Blood and feathers marked the morning slaughter.

  The speckled rooster had run headless circles, unaware the worst was over. Now gutted and plucked, he hung in the rafters by yellow feet, the shed smelling of blood.

  Father lit a candle on the stump next to the hatchet. With a black boot, he kicked the floorboards free of kindling, and knelt, saintly in the candle’s radiance. From nowhere, he held a quart jar brimming with clear liquid. “Communion cider,” he always called it. “Pray with me, boy.”

  Hard fingers dug into Joshua’s elbow, hauling him to his knees, and Father lifted the jar to his lips. He took a long swallow. Another, and he grimaced, lips off his teeth.

  The liquid didn’t look like cider. Didn’t smell like the cider Joshua and his sisters tapped from the barrel outside the pressroom. Only Father went inside to the press; his job alone, the making of cider.

  “Lord forgive this boy,” Father said.

  And Lord only knew, Joshua wanted forgiveness. He needed forgiveness for reading books beyond the Bible, for woolgathering when he should have been working.

  But the other faults? Soggy fields, seed rot, rain—? If those powers were his, surely he could loosen Father’s grip, rise, take up his fright, and walk from the woodshed.

  Looking like Sunday, Father intoned a prayer, the man upstanding as a white board fence, hair trim at the earlobes, his marriage beard square, upper lip razored smooth—all according to the Ordnung. He kept to the Plain rules.

  His fingers bit the back of Joshua’s neck, while the other hand held fervently to the half-empty jar, and through the window, distant as someone else’s life, the house stood outlined in the dark: the steep slate, high chimneys, Joshua’s bedroom dormer, his sisters’ dormer. If he listened intently, he might hear their sleep and Mama’s.