Preview of The Stone Book Quartet Summary:

Although each of these brief stories can be read separately, The Stone Book and its equally slender companion volumes, Granny Reardun, Tom Fobble's Day and The Aimer Gate, gain complexity and power when read in sequence. Taken together, the books read like sections of a single novel. The quartet traces the history of an unnamed working-class family (based on Garner's own) in Chorley, Cheshire, from the 1860s of The Stone Book to the dark days of World War II in Tom Fobble's Day. Each book is the story of one special day when a member of the rising generation faces decisions that will shape his or her life in a changing world.

The formula enables Garner to catch four generations of young people, not just at a dramatic moment in their own lives, but also at a crucial time in the larger story of their family and society...