What the Stones Remember : A Life Rediscovered

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Tending a garden was not what occupied poet Patrick Lane for the first six decades of his life. Forty-five years of drinking was occupation enough. But at age 60, he stepped back into the world of sobriety while seeding, planting, and watering the garden that became his passion and his salvation. Like Mary Oliver, Lane discovers that much can be learned from the natural world, and his exquisite powers of observation provide not only a source of wonder but a new vantage point from which to face the painful memories of his past. Fragments of his upbringing -- a nightmarish childhood in a small Canadian mining town, the early death of his brother, and the murder of his father -- spill onto the pages unbeckoned. "Somewhere there is a story that needs telling," Lane writes, and the story that emerges yields surprising lessons in both promise and regret.

Marriage, divorce, and estrangement from his own children are all part of what Lane remembers as he seeks to re-engage with life, using the tending of his garden as a metaphor for tilling the soil of his days. Adept at finding inspiration outside his back door, Lane has recorded these first few months of his newfound clarity without pity or sentimentality. A modern-day book of wisdom literature, What the Stones Remember is an extraordinary work, profoundly moving in its immediacy and courage. (Holiday 2005 Selection)

Frances Itani

The overall impression is that of a man who knows much and who is stepping softly. He moves through his garden with fear and quiet exultation. His memories are never self-pitying, but there is a sorrowful beauty to the strong, poetic language. Despite the savage reality of the revelations, there is a peacefulness, a maturity of vision that is a pure gift to the reader.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

In January 2001, Canadian poet Lane emerged from two months in an addiction treatment center, sober after 45 years of steady, heavy drinking and drug use. He had to learn to live with a raw new self at age 62, and this book, part memoir, part diary, told month by month, chronicles his first year, retrieves his past and records the seasonal cycle of the garden he tends on Vancouver Island. Lane's parents were both alcoholics from mill and mining towns where heavy drinking and family brutality were normal. His impressionistic memories, painful and poetic, probe the secrets of his younger self. Lane's now-dead mother, beautiful, overworked with five children, unfaithful to his father during WWII, a gardener herself and quite mad for part of her life, haunts him literally-he sees her in the garden at hallucinatory moments-and at the end of this extraordinary year he brings himself to forgive her. The signal event of this period is Lane's marriage in August to his longtime companion, poet Lorna Crozier, but readers will find that almost incidental to Lane's remarkable nature writing: animals, birds and insects, flowers, moss and trees are as vivid as memory. Agent, Kathryn Mulders. Author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In spring 2001, Canadian writer Lane (There Is a Season) completed two months of treatment for a 45-year addiction to drugs and alcohol. His first year of sobriety, chronicled in this powerful memoir, often finds the author in his beloved garden on Vancouver Island, where there are few people and places to distract from the rhythm of the seasons. Like Thoreau, he finds strength in nature and simplicity. Through his patient and precise observation of insects, plants, animals, and birds, he offers keen insights into the burdens of the past and the promise of the present. Lane's prose is as rich in its poetic power as the sense of renewal found in his garden. He moves effortlessly from moments of radiant joy to memories of aching pain (e.g., regarding his father's murder, his failed marriages, and his failed attempts to end his own life). At once courageous, honest, and uplifting, this book of wisdom and wonder should be savored. Appropriate for public and academic libraries.-Anthony Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.