Water over Stones

A perceptive, moving novel about life and death in the Basque Country, from the author of Nevada Days.

Bernardo Atxagas Water over Stones follows a group of interconnected people in a small village in the Basque Country. It opens with the story of a young boy who has returned from his French boarding school to his uncles bakery, where his family hopes he will speak again. Hes been silent since an incident in which he threw a stone at a teacher for reasons unknown. With the assistance of twin brothers who take him to a river in the forest, hell recover his speech. As the years pass, those twins, now adults, will be part of a mining strike in the Ugarte region, and so take up the mantle of the narrative, just as others will after them.

Water over Stones is similar in nature to Atxagas earlier books Obabakoak and The Accordionists Son, as it weaves in themes of friendship, nature, and death. Yet