Granite Kingdom Receives Vermont History Journal Review!

This review is excerpted from Vermont History Vol. 91, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2023): 126–130. © 2023 by the Vermont Historical Society. ISSN: 0042-4161; on-line ISSN: 1544-3043

Granite Kingdom is a Cineramic view of a small Northeast Kingdom town held captive by two competing entrepreneurs in the early days of Vermont’s granite industry. In his author’s note, Eric Pope tells us that the fictional town of Granite Junction is modeled after Woodbury, Vermont, once known for its exceptional quality fine-grain granite, used in “some of the grandest structures built during a golden age of American architecture, including the state capitols for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the city halls in Chicago and Cleveland, and dozens of churches, banks, mansions, post offices, and public monuments as far west as Idaho” (p. ix).

The other ongoing narrative is the Granite Junction Gazette, inspired by Pope’s former ownership and management of the Hardwick Gazette eight miles away from the fictional town, which he credits as primary source material for this rich tale of historical fiction. The story revolves around the sometimes fractious relationship between the town’s largest employer, George Rutherford, president of the Sterling Granite Company in another nearby town of Sterling, and an upstart competitor, Ernest Wheeler, president of the Wheeler Granite Company.

The story’s omniscient narrator entices the reader through a vast array of the locals who people Granite Junction but also relies on the two principals in his fictional Granite Junction Gazette: Clarence Slayton and Dan Strickland. Slayton is the owner, editor, and publisher, who also writes a regular column called “Local Lumps.” Strickland is his ad salesman, galley proofer, and part-time reporter.

As I read further and was introduced to the panoply of characters comprising Granite Junction, I felt I was somewhere between Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and a compendium of Vermont Life magazine stories. Among the many compelling characters and subplots the reader will encounter are a lady vendor of home-made whiskey, a local knock-shop laundry service, the emergence of silicosis as a threat to the granite finishing industry, a murder/suicide, and the suspicion that anarchist rebels from Barre’s Socialist Labor Party Hall may have infiltrated the politics of Granite Junction. The deep variety and well-drawn character development of the people of Granite Junction makes for an intriguing glimpse of life in a Vermont mining community at the turn of the twentieth century.

At first, I struggled with the author’s narrative style, which occasionally overreaches and violates the basic principle of narrative storytelling: “show, don’t tell.” But I got used to it and came to see the narrator as, in fact, not the author’s omniscient voice but rather another character in the plot: “Edna knew her first duty was to her husband, and she didn’t want to add her frustration to the bitter disappointment he struggled with” (p. 146).

Reading and re-reading Granite Kingdom, I tried to imagine an appropriate metaphor for the storyline’s lack of a single narrative arc, and it dawned on me that reading Eric Pope’s lively tale was like watching a home movie plucked off the shelf and seeing a slice in time of a former life. I say this as an indication of the story’s power for me. My interest in Granite Junction never waned, and I looked forward each evening to turning off the TV and revisiting it by reading another forty pages, even on the second read. The novel does not conform to the most common narrative conventions; but it does not in any manner let the reader down. It’s a rich and enticing tale told unconventionally, with great character and community detail and an intriguing glimpse of an earlier time in Vermont.

The historical aspect of the novel triggered an interest in learning more as I assumed, like many Vermonters with a limited knowledge of Vermont’s geological understory, that Vermont’s quarrying industries were limited to Barre for granite and Poultney and Proctor for the softer slate and marble stones. Having grown up in Morrisville, I had no idea that Hardwick/Woodbury was also a major center for granite and was eager to learn more.

Not only did I learn a great deal from Granite Kingdom, but I also thoroughly enjoyed reading it and recommend it unconditionally to all who love a great story or appreciate Vermont historical fiction.

—Bill Schubart

Bill Schubart is a retired businessman, author of nine works of literary fiction, and a regular columnist for VTDigger.