Paul Prescot’s desire to catalogue and comprehend the aboriginal rock paintings of the Canadian Shield is told through the eyes of the woman he loves, and who, for her own reasons, accompanies him on his travels to the deep north. Her journeys with her husband, and then alone, returning to the north shore of Lake Superior to commend his ashes to the water, draw her deeper into a history that, while foreign to them both, seems to offer a meaningful alternative to a world that has gone wrong.

Peter Unwin turns his unique talents to a story that lies at the heart of this country and to the crucial issue of our times. Written in Stone maps the exhilarating and ultimately tragic consequences of one man’s commitment to the land of his birth, a land whose deep and unwritten past is outside the reach of his understanding. Written in Stone goes beyond the surface acknowledgments of settler impacts, and exists on the border of two solitudes, where the known and unknown cannot be separated, where mythology and reality are one, and where an old and inaccessible knowledge holds the means to a possible reconciliation.

Peter Unwin was born in Sheffield, England, and raised in Southern Ontario. He studied at Carleton University in Ottawa. His fiction includes the short story collection The Rock Farmers, which was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the novel Nine Bells for a Man. His non-fiction includes The Wolf’s Head: Writing Lake Superior and Hard Surface: In Search of the Canadian Road. He has travelled extensively in the Canadian north. Currently, he is a Master’s candidate in Culture and Communications at York and Ryerson universities. An avid practitioner of martial arts, baseball, and literature, he lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.

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“… Unwin constructs a meaningful, lived-in portrait of long-term love in all its failings and rugged fortitude.”

Quill & Quire