A Stone's Throw

The year is 1969 when twelve-year-old Maggie Stone’s world suddenly begins to spin out of control. Her mother, Lillian Stone, who suffers from an unknown neurological condition that frequently sends her to bed in an unresponsive state for hours at a time, has forced Maggie to be the responsible adult at far too young of age. When her mother goes into a debilitating spell that she cannot be revived from, Lillian ends up in a San Francisco hospital and Maggie is dispatched to an orphanage. As Maggie deals with her conflicting emotions, she finds herself both fiercely protective and scornful of her mother’s abandonment.

 And just as she’s beginning to adjust to a tough new life at the orphanage, a grandfather she’s never met suddenly appears to turn her life even further upside down. Ira Stone, who has been estranged from his daughter Lillian since she ran from home pregnant at fifteen, shows up on the orphanage doorstep and whisks Maggie away to his ranch in remote Montana. Thrust into the care of a grizzled grandfather shaped by war, loss, and long-held resentments, Maggie must learn to how to survive in a world that expects grit before tenderness. Ira is a hard man of few words who has eked out a living on his ranch through backbreaking work on the unforgiving plains of Montana. A widower and a WWI veteran with battle scars, Ira struggles to relate to a young preteen he has never met.

 As a young girl on the cusp of womanhood but still a child who has spent her life taking care of her mother, Maggie is thrust into a completely foreign situation with no cultural or geographical familiarity to her life in San Francisco. Without her mother and close friends she can relate to, Maggie feels abandoned, unloved and resentful. She is fearful for her mother and her future, and is insecure about meeting the expectations of a stern and demanding grandfather in learning her new roles and responsibilities on the ranch.

 Ira and Maggie are equally skeptical of each other as they attempt to adapt to the vastly different world they now share. Despite having to overcome the overwhelming obstacles placed in her path, Maggie’s determination and can-do spirit are evident in this heartwarming story of how adversity, when met with patience and effort, can transform loss into connection and estrangement into chosen family.