Publisher's Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. A lyric essay from Iceland's east fjords, THE STONE COLLECTOR examines, over decades and by degrees, how one woman's daily walk sparked a private collection and public attraction. Most every day of her life, Petra took a walk; and most every walk, Petra found a stone. Petra's jaw-dropping collection of jasper and onyx and agate and amethyst and scolecite and calcite and chalcedony and spar spilled filled the house and spilled out into the garden. Her neighbors fretted over the strangely feminist act of spending so much time in the mountains. Her children grew up with strangers in the garden, strangers who saw the collection from the road and drew close. Tour guides brought busses and Geologists wrote letters and Petra served coffee in her kitchen, as the public pressed her collection into becoming a museum. This is the second installment in A. Kendra Greene's series on Icelandic museums.
