Build Me a Tower

Theo MacBain is known from coast to coast as a stonemason’s mason, master of the art of finding just the right rock at the right time. Word of mouth alone guarantees him all the high-end stonework he can handle. His face is weathered, his craftsman’s arms sinewed.

Stones are easy, but people are hard. The pieces of Theo’s life are out of plumb. His ex-wife is estranged. His two grown children rarely call.

When Hanson Blair, a troubled young woman with a sketchy past, apprentices herself to Theo, his solitude begins to show cracks. Young enough to be his daughter, Hannie works like a stevedore, hiding her vulnerability under a flinty veneer that matches his own. But when she smiles, her face lights up and her eyes are irresistible.

In Theo, she unlocks a dawning capacity for tenderness, whose flip side is a stunning aptitude for violence. When this laconic man draws on a profound reservoir of strength to free Hannie from a relationship that’s gone horribly wrong, and her gratitude knows no bounds, will he dare to fill in the missing pieces of his life--one more time?

Racked by uncertainty, each of them fearful of presuming too much, Theo and Hannie work hard at respecting the bounds of their friendship, while he steps out on thin ice with more age-appropriate prospects: a schoolteacher with bottled-up yearnings; a lawyer who reserves her ferocious passion for prosecuting domestic abusers.

What is the right answer? Is there one, or has Theo, nearing sixty, run through life’s chances? He is eloquent with his hands, but talking is hard. Thinking just seems to lead him down one blind alley after another. The happiness he seeks proves tragically fleeting.

In the end, after a lifetime of disappointment and sorrow, the master stonemason with the craggy exterior may be left with just one saving grace: the foolish willingness, against all reason, to put it all on the line, expose his heart, and risk making one last mistake.