Of Stones and Spirits

Of Stones and Spirits is about freezing particular times and places in history-the poignant and delightful details that otherwise might have been lost. Lisa Paulson takes the reader on a magical carpet to places where she has worked and lived or visited over the past sixty years, from post-World War II ruins in Naples, Italy, to the much older ruins of Ephesus in Turkey-all juxtaposed against the lush backdrops of nature, which she delights in. The travels begin with Lisa and her husband-to-be in 1953 and gradually expand over half a century to include children, grandchildren, and other relatives and colleagues. The book takes the reader inside the pages of meticulously kept notebooks where adventures were recorded in real time. You will weep with her in the horrifying, heartbreaking wreckage of Naples, wonder with her at near-miraculous healings wrought by doctors of traditional medicine in China, and prowl with her through prehistoric caves in southwest France. You will drink wine on the terraces of restored, two-hundred-year-old farmhouses on sunlit Tuscan mountainsides and pound across Scottish sand dunes dotted with prickly golden gorse bushes to the North Sea. . . . And in countries with delicate, controversial, or changing governments and cultures, Lisa offers penetrating observations. She burrows beneath the pleasant surface attractions aimed at tourists-often because she is deliberately exposing herself to the raw crossroads that nations find themselves standing at in moments of seismic shifts and painful decisions.