Book: The Sorrow Stone by J. A. McLachlan
categories: Book, Medieval Fiction, Women's Fiction, Spiritual and Metaphysical, Historical Fantasy, Myths and Folktales, Middle Ages, Folklore, Secrets, Loss and Grieving, Historical Realism, South of France, Historical Fiction
Jane Ann McLachlan
about this book: While listening to a talk by a midwife about midwifery in the middle ages, I first heard the folk lore at the center of The Sorrow Stone -- that a woman mourning the death of her child could alleviate her grief by selling a nail from the child's coffin to a wandering peddler. This was called "selling your sorrow". The idea intrigued me. What if it was true? How would it affect the peddler, to bear a double load of sorrow? How would it affe3ct the woman, to be unable to feel sorrow any longer? I wanted to explore these ideas in a story.
I wrote the first version of The Sorrow Stone while I was staying with my daughter in France. A few years later, while I was writing the third draft, I returned to the south of France to visit the towns and monasteries I mentioned in the novel. I talked to historians and guides to find out the vegetation, weather, customs and sites that would have existed in the 12th Century so I could get the setting of my novel as realistic as possible, and take my readers with me through medieval France in the 12th Century.
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about this book: While listening to a talk by a midwife about midwifery in the middle ages, I first heard the folk lore at the center of The Sorrow Stone -- that a woman mourning the death of her child could alleviate her grief by selling a nail from the child's coffin to a wandering peddler. This was called "selling your sorrow". The idea intrigued me. What if it was true? How would it affect the peddler, to bear a double load of sorrow? How would it affe3ct the woman, to be unable to feel sorrow any longer? I wanted to explore these ideas in a story.
