Men of Stone

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Like her first young-adult novel, the award-winning Janey’s Girl
(1998), Friesen’s second is a cross-generational story in which a
single-parent mother eventually “grows” as much as the book’s
central adolescent character. The youngest in a family of five, Neil,
15, is the only male, his father having died a decade before. Neil once
enjoyed six joyous years of extracurricular dance classes, but abandoned
this creative art when he reached high school and was teased about being
a dancer, including being called “Ballerina Boy.” The ugly taunting
has recently resumed, led by the school bully, Claude, who is jealous of
Neil’s emerging romantic interest in Kat. When Neil’s octogenarian
paternal great-aunt Frieda arrives for an extended visit, her presence
initially upsets the family’s social order. However, the diminutive
woman bonds with Neil and shares with him stories about his Mennonite
heritage, particularly her own tragic tale of becoming a young wife and
mother under Russian persecution and having to deal with Stalin’s
“men of stone”—those who would hate blindly. After Neil is
hospitalized following a brutal beating by Claude and two goons, he
plots physical revenge; however, through Aunt Frieda, he finds a better
way to achieve a public and personal victory. Like the mother in
Janey’s Girl, Neil’s mother also discovers that she has permitted
unresolved past happenings to inappropriately dictate her present
behaviors.

A strong cast of well-developed characters and an engaging, intertwined
plot make Men of Stone a fine read for adolescents of both genders.
Highly recommended.