The Stone Catchers by Laura Leigh Morris

When a shooter opens fire at the local community college in The Stone Catchers, Laura Leigh Morris’s first novel, the characters are brought together in ways they could never have expected. The speakers of The Stone Catchers are called to do things they never dreamed they were capable of, stopping the shooter’s spree by ending his life. The protagonists of this story step up for themselves and their community and are forever linked by their actions. Morris, also the author of the collection Jaws of Life: Stories (2018), offers a multi-speaker perspective of the ripple effect of the shooting on Brickton, West Virginia.

In The Stone Catchers, a mass shooting becomes a vehicle for people to seize the power to change their world when no other option feels viable to them. Exploring the intersections of place and agency, Morris writes characters so rooted in place that they do not leave their community even when it has done them wrong. The shooting explodes their universe, opening an opportunity for the protagonists to examine what makes them feel like they have control over their own lives.

While tragedy changes one’s connection to a place, or a vocation, it is more difficult to sever that connection completely. Teachers often bear the day-to-day brunt of community-tending. In the wake of a school shooting, they find themselves having to do the impossible, maintaining and restoring order after enduring unfathomable, unprecedented events. Talking with her husband, instructor Donetta admits her lack of a path forward: 

“You sure you still want to be their teacher?” Frank asked.

“No, but I don’t know what else to be,” (208).

For others living in the aftermath, the irony of surviving the attack is that it’s a rare chance for them to be heard, for them to tell their stories when they’ve never been asked before, as they are being interviewed about their experiences. Student Priscilla Silver, one of the survivors, asks the TV crew, “Do you want to hear what it’s like to go to all these funerals without knowing the people?” (101).

Instead of distancing himself from the shooter, Wayne Buckley, fellow student Charlie Folger reexamines their shared history, following the thread of Wayne’s life back, and reconnecting with Wayne’s mother, together trying to locate the point at which a life’s trajectory veers off course.

Watching the Brickton survivors persevere is a study in tenacity. As Donetta muses, “All we really have is each other. Even when we don’t like each other. Maybe especially when we don’t like each other” (209).

We may think we know what we would do in such a situation, but the characters of The Stone Catchers surprise themselves. Morris considers that being one of the “lucky” ones might not feel like luck at all. Never shying away from an ugly truth, Morris’s novel grants its protagonists dignity, bearing witness as they hold onto the stones they’ve been thrown and use them to build a new normal.

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review by Jessica Manack