Slow Work — Tim Farrington

"All the gravestone shops in all the towns in all the world, and she walks into mine." Jeremiah Mason learned the stone-working craft from his grandfather, a cathedral mason of the old school," at an early age. But it is not until an old love shows up in his own shop one day, bearing a raw new grief, that Jeremiah begins to understand his grandfather's extraordinary gift with the mourners of those for whom he carved his gravestones with such care, and to fathom the real depths of love and loss, and the human heart. Tim Farrington of the author of the trilogy The Monk Downstairs--- a New York Times Notable Book--- The Monk Upstairs, and The Lazarus Kid; as well as the novels Lizzie's War, The California Book of the Dead, and Blues for Hannah, and the nonfiction book A Hell of Mercy: Some Meditations on Depression and the Dark Night of the Soul. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Sun, Image, Zyzzyva, and San Francisco Magazine.