Beneficiary of her father's lands, livestock and gristmill, Catherine Rasmussen's otherwise secure life is greatly impaired by her marriage to Elias Jensen, so-called Doctor of Jurisprudence, political aspirant and known seducer. Only her sons keep Catherine on track. Her home, the mill and other outbuildings have been spared the devastation of Denmark's 1864 war with Prussia, but the conflict left Catherine emotionally shattered. A precious necklace and a few thousand pieces of gold in the vault behind a painting of the mill, represent Catherine's liquid assets but doubts over Denmark's future have the heiress to her father's gristmill business anxious.
Protesters throng the cobbled streets of Copenhagen demanding answers for Denmark's war with Prussia and reform of the country's archaic monarchical system of government. Free elections of a more representative body in the government had grudgingly been granted but the citizens want more. Adding spice to the boiling political stew, the human existence philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard shook the government's bedpartner, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, (Denmark's state church), wide awake, and Catherine's eldest son, Peter a student protester is caught up in the fray. But of greater concern to Catherine is Peter's romance with a shop keepers' daughter, Maren Carlsen.
The implications of Peter and Maren's union include changing religions and immigration to of all places, the United States of America. itself a boiling cauldron of civil strife! All this has Catherine extremely despondent.
Is Peter's desire to leave Denmark his way of ending the conflict between himself and younger brother, Ferdinand? Or is it genuinely connected to his recent finding of peace and direction? Catherine doesn't know. Her own marriage is a disaster and many days the idea of divorcing Elias, selling her holdings and then traipsing all over the globe doesn't sound so illogical.
Two Runs of Stone is an epic in historical fiction set in the late 1800s and is the result of twenty-five years of concerted effort. Actual journals of the women and men who lived and died during the era provide the foundation of the work, not to mention their Danish, English and American ancestors. Here's to great reading!
