Robert (B0b) Grant is a retired lawyer who lives in Fergus and part-time in Southampton and who was part of the ‘Meet the Author’ series presented by Brucedale Press at the summer Farmers’ Market in Port Elgin.
With a love of history, writing and the game of curling, Grant has managed to blend all three together in his first historical novel.
As a curler, who has travelled internationally, particularly in Scotland, it seemed only natural that Grant was able to intertwine his sense of mystery, travel and love of curling with Ailsa Craig, where the world’s best curling stones have been produced for centuries.
Grant gave life to those, who worked mining the granite at Ailsa Stone on the west coast of Scotland, and then took them to the fishing boats of Aberdeen in the east, through the young Stuart Fraser, whose father wanted something better than the mine for his son. The young Stuart then had to deal with prejudice, class distinction, the misunderstanding of what was then his mysterious illness and … the family curse.
His love and eventual marriage with Regina, who is of the town’s elite class, is a foreshadowing of what is to come under the curse of the Frasers.
From leading what is to become an isolated life as lighthouse keepers, the couple faces the internal conflict of giving up a son to adoption in order to give him a better life in the new world of Canada. All that the son, a little boy at the time, has of his past life, and of which he has no knowledge, is the little replica Ailsa curling stone that, for some reason, he will treasure and that has been part of him.
The novel weaves the lives of those in a world of old traditions with those from a new world … and who all have ties unknown to them. The ending? Only the sequel will tell and it is now in publication.
The Ailsa Stone is available at:
- visit www.volumesDirect.com
- Amazon.com (US prices)
- Indigo (Canada)
- The Bookery (Fergus)
- One and Only (Fergus)
- Twice Loved Books (Elora)
- the Bookshelf (Guelph)
- Bruce County Museum (Southampton)
- Wellington County Museum (Centre Wellington)
