The Alphabet Stones is about three families, one of them supernatural, and how they intertwine-with each other and with the land, a moody eastern Ontario of communes, music festivals and cedar swamps; stony farms and muddy rivers. This is a story about enchantment-how the land enchants us, how we enchant one another-why it’s necessary that we do, and dangerous when we don’t. Like 14 year old Jody, we learn not just the names of trees and stars and birds, but also of “the gate between worlds,” a place she stumbles across in a forgotten back pasture, both ordinary and powerfully mysterious.
Praise for The Alphabet Stones:
“Pflug sets out to do no small thing: worry the voice out of stones, the magic out of secret rooms; trace the shifting shape of a shadow childhood. This is an enchanting book, quietly spell-binding. A minor miracle.”
– Tim Wynne-Jones
“The Alphabet Stones does what a good fantasy is supposed to do: take on difficult subjects without losing the story’s underlying sense of wonder. This is an absorbing, modern day fairy tale and I loved every moment of it.”
– Charles de Lint
“Quietly beautiful, The Alphabet Stones is magical and ethereal yet also deeply evocative of, and grounded, in place.”
– Jan Thornhill
“Pflug does an incredible job of exploring the dream-like quality of memory – shifting, changing, and uncertain. But, the memories she explores are literally tinged by the mythic, the unbelievable, and the supernormal. Jody and her friends have had contact with the otherwordly through a mythic place where stones are written with words and images that evoke a world beyond our own, and she has been touched by an element of the fey…She allows the readers to truly feel what it is like to stand on the cliff between reality and the mythic, madness and ideas of normalcy.”
– Derek Newman-Stille, Speculating Canada Sept 10, 2013
“The Alphabet Stones is an engaging story exploring love, loss, spiritual expansion, coming of (any) age, and the enduring landscapes of relationships. Set in rural, eastern Ontario, the story is rooted in the land. Its characters, whether Canadian, Anishinaabe or a family of fairies, are born out of intimate connections with place. This is Pflug’s storytelling at its finest – she quickly and completely draws the reader into her world, and then without us knowing, shifts our gaze back onto the most vulnerable parts of ourselves. I fell into the world of The Alphabet Stones so completely, I found myself not wanting to leave.”
– Leanne Simpson