Of Leather & Stone

Set in the prosperous nineteenth century industrial New England town of Milford, Massachusetts, this deeply affecting, family saga, is a fictional account of Charles Paul Collins' ancestors written as personal memoirs in their own words.

Cornelius Collins escapes the horror of Ireland's Great Famine to Boston where he becomes a master boot maker, and Giuseppe Ambrosini, a master stonecutter, leaves Italy to seek his fortune in America.

Each man and their families find themselves caught between America's promise of prosperity, and violent cultural prejudice against them, as they hurl headlong into the twentieth century and "the war to end all war".