Stone Creek: A Novel [Paperback]

Victoria Lustbader (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2008

In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.

Danny, a young widower, still grieves for his late wife, but for the sake of his five-year-old son, Caleb, he knows he must move on. Alone in her summer house, Lily has left her workaholic husband, Paul, to his long hours and late nights back in the city. In Stone Creek, she can yearn in solitude for the treasure she's been denied: a child.

What occurs when Lily and Danny meet is immediate and undeniable—despite Lily being ten years older and married. But ultimately it is little Caleb's sadness and need that will tip the scales, upsetting a precarious balance between joy and despair, between what cannot happen . . . and what must.

An unforgettable novel of tremendous emotional heft, Stone Creek brilliantly illuminates how the powers of love and loss transform the human heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Childless, married Lily Spencer, 46, falls for 30-something widower Danny Malloy and his five-year-old son in this would-be Whartonesque marriage tale from former book editor Lustbader (Hidden). Lily's troubled marriage has led her to retreat to the small Catskill town of Stone Creek while husband Paul, 54, a successful Manhattan attorney, remains submerged in work. Paul and Lily have given up hope of having a child: Paul with brisk efficiency, Lily still mournful and yearning. When she and gifted, still-grieving furniture restorer Danny espy each other in the Stone Creek supermarket, sparks fly. As they come together, Lily finds in Danny the companionship Paul doesn't provide, and in Danny's son, Caleb, she finds a boy who needs a mother. As much as Lustbader tries to give Danny equal time, his struggles with a secretive, unforgiving mother-in-law never attain the resonance of Lily's search among an ex-husband, a current husband, a lover and a boy for someone with whom she can share her love and pain. Piercingly personal descriptions of love, loss and desperate attempts to plug life's gaps give Lustbader's second novel its emotional edge, while there's plenty of steam for romance readers. (June)
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From Booklist

Still reeling from the sudden loss of his young wife, master craftsman Danny Malloy narrows his world to focus on his precocious five-year-old son, Caleb. Knowing, however, that he needs to start reconnecting with family and friends, Danny reluctantly agrees to volunteer his woodworking skills in the renovation of a historic home for a local charity. With her domineering, work-obsessed husband increasingly away on business, this same charity fills a void in the life of Lily Spencer, whose smoldering anger over Paul’s prenuptial demand that the couple remain childless fuels her increasing sense of despair and frustration. Thrown together by their shared love of children and mutual sense of rejection, Danny and Lily find much-needed solace and support. Yet they are also confronted by a palpable emotional need and physical attraction that could be the best, or worst, thing that ever happened to them. Although themes of death and mourning, abandonment, and revenge run deep through Lustbader’s second novel, her characters’ ultimate resolutions communicate reassuringly affirmative and promising messages. --Carol Haggas

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Product Details

• Paperback: 382 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061369217
• ISBN-13: 978-0061369216
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,678,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tender, heart-wrenching story, June 8, 2008

By 

Book Lover (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Creek: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a great summer read. With compassionate, loving and warm characters, Ms. Lustbader's soothing voice is a gentle guiding hand as the novel journeys through two strangers grieving loss. Lustbader examines the many facets of love and human relationships from male/female and adult to child points of view.

Set in smalltown upstate New York, Lily spends a summer at Stone Creek while her powerful, workaholic husband, Paul, is home in New York City. Their once passionate marriage, has fizzled somewhat under the weight of Lily's childless sadness. While Lily is a vulnerable character, you get the sense of a quiet, penetrating power within her. One that Danny (ten years younger) rugged, sexy, outdoorsy thirty-something widower is drawn to and they form a very realistic and compassionate bond. Danny's son Caleb is swept up by Lily, too. It's well done and there are some nice moments between even the minor characters. Get tissues ready.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book to read during the summer'months, June 6, 2008

By 

La Belle Aurore (Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Creek: A Novel (Paperback)

'... which is worse - to lose something vital that you have had, or to have never had it at all...'

Stone Creek is about love, passion, forgiving, emptiness in the heart, sex and parenthood. Mrs Lustbader had to have lived `Stone Creek' to write about it so honestly. This is a great book, one that didn't leave me indifferent to the solitude felt by a woman that has it all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fair, October 26, 2008

By 

L. Phipps "book lover" (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Creek: A Novel (Paperback)

I read this book and was excited to read it from the great reviews I read on Amazon. This book is easy to read, but I did not find the depth in the characters that I thought needed to surface. I felt compassion for Eve the Mother in Law and less for Lilly who to me was portrayed as poor me. I have everything but I am not happy. This is another story of someone marring someone saying they don't want children and then angry when the other partner doesn't understand when they change their mind. I loved little Caleb, but the ending was rushed and I really I had no idea what happened. It is an easy read but probably 50 pages too long.