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Full Description
Published by the University of Cincinnati Press
The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards. While working on a novel, author and longtime Cincinnati resident Michael Griffith starts visiting Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, the nation's third-largest cemetery. Soon he's taking almost daily jaunts, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection of essays that emerge from chance encounters with an interesting headstone, odd epitaph, unusual name, or quirk of memory. Researching obituaries, newspaper clippings, and family legacies, Griffith uncovers stories of race, feminism, art, and death.
Rather than sticking to the cemetery's most famous, or infamous, graves, Griffith stays true to the principle of ramble and incidental discovery. The result is an eclectic group of subjects, ranging from well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright to those much less celebrated- a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances. Nearly ninety photos add dimension and often an element of playfulness.
The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what does not, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempt to leave monuments that last. In doing so, it beautifully weaves connections born out of the storyteller's inquisitive mind.
Contents
A State of Ungress: Composing as Rambling
The Absent Guest: Leon Van Loo
Bake Visibly!: Gustav Huenefeld
"A Great Awkward Bunglehood of Woman": Fanny Wright
Interlude: The Bank-Shot Unmemoir
"Death's Taxicab": Willard Hess and Martin Hale Crane
Accidental Charon: Jacob Strader, Dred Scott, and Body-Snatching
"Due Allowance for Foam": Martha McClellan Brown and the Ohio Women's Crusade
"Another Well-Picked Skeleton": Homunculi, Mail-Order Tree Stumps, Petrified Logs, and the Many, Many Charles Millers
Outlook Hazy: Laura Pruden, Harry Houdini, and Arthur Conan Doyle Interrogate the Spirits
Ghosts of the Walldogs: Gus Holthaus
Interlude: The Crypto Auto-Obituary
"And They Did Kill Her by Inches": The Strange Case of Carrie Elder
The Sculptor, His Son, the Odd Fellows, and the Weird Assassin: Louis Rebisso(s) and Oscar Mundhenk
Six Degrees of Jonathan Cilley
The Permeable Earth
Acknowledgments
Index
Notes
Illustration
Credits
