Publication Date: May 11, 2024
Two women who never meet, a motherless child and childless mother, are brought together to discover the real magic of creation.
Simona Casale, a Minneapolis artist, learns she’s pregnant the same day she lands a major mural installation at a new women’s center. No problem; she can take on a surprise pregnancy and a monster commission. And with the father in London, that’s one less complication.
Gemma Ledbetter, a London homemaker, is grieving the babies she couldn’t have. When her husband returns from the States, she decides they’ll start fresh. But it doesn’t take long for her plans to unravel.
Simona and Gemma live an ocean apart, yet their lives become forever entwined when the women Simona is painting come to life, stepping out of their portraits. They arrive with a purpose: to nurture a broken heart…or two. Simona and Gemma learn about art-making, love, grief, and motherhood when they are magically welcomed into a lineage of women who share their lives’ joys and sorrows during the most creative time of these women’s lives.
Alida Winternheimer’s magical realism in A Stone’s Throw bends the genre noted to involve this literary fiction itself, art that appears realistic but is truly magical, and a woman’s intuition that nods to a sense of magic.
Gemma and Simona live an ocean apart, are artists, and love the same man. However, each relationship is affected by the role of motherhood that fate has determined and how each woman responds to her circumstances.
Peter and Gemma have survived multiple failed pregnancies, each bringing a hope of parenthood and reconnection that has become lost in the roller coaster of uncertainty and loss as Gemma’s world narrows to her desire to become a mother.
Simona is wrapped up in her art. She meets Peter as he visits the United States and believes their romantic fling will end when his business trip ends. A pregnancy is not what she has planned, especially since she has been given the opportunity to create a mural for a new women’s center.
Winternheimer shines the focus not on the affair but on the inner strength and emotional vulnerabilities of each woman. As Simona paints a community of women, each of her subjects comes to life, helping her to reflect on who has shaped her womanhood. She is portrayed as independent and self-reliant. Gemma appears frail, crumbling under the stress of the seemingly impossible dream of becoming a mother. How the author connects the two women is uniquely beautiful.
With broad strokes of perceived and true femininity, Alida Winternheimer paints A Stone’s Throw to truly step from the pages, drawing you into a story of the effects our actions have on each other. So, while being true to yourself, look for ways to care for others.
A native Minnesotan, Alida grew up with wholesome Midwestern values and a daily dose of “Minnesota Nice,” but always sensed there was more going on behind people’s closed doors. Her stories explore the core of our humanity with richly emotional, darkly themed tales about strong women, their families, and the secrets that haunt them. Winner of the Page Turner Award, Confluence Prize, three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and a notable in Best American Essays, Alida is a developmental editor and story craft coach with a podcast for writers and readers curious about writers, called the Story Works Round Table.
