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How Long a Shadow

$18.95

“You can smell the stone dust in this richly imagined and deeply researched book.” —Michael David Lukas, author of The Oracle of Stamboul and The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

“How Long a Shadow swept me into a world I didn't want to leave.” —Daniela Petrova, author of Her Daughter’s Mother

“I loved these people so much; I was truly sorry when I turned the last page . . . unforgettable.” —Stephanie Cowell, author of The Man in the Stone Cottage and Claude & Camille, American Book Award winner

In 1903 Barre, Vermont, granite is king—and it’s killing the men who sculpt it.

While her father and brothers risk their lungs in the granite sheds and the town fractures over union strikes, twenty-year-old Rosina Bottinelli longs for a life shaped by her own hands. Determined not to be bound by marriage, she sets aside her artistic ambitions and turns to midwifery. Her apprenticeship to her formidable aunt reveals both the fierce power and the terrible cost of women’s work.

But Barre is a tinderbox. A deadly lung disease—mal d’america—ravages the immigrant stonecutters. Labor unrest erupts into violence. And a bitter political rift between Rosina’s unionist father and his capitalist brother threatens to shatter the family that crossed an ocean together.

As love and loyalty collide with ambition and belief, Rosina must decide what kind of life she will carve—and how long a shadow she is willing to cast.

by Cheryl A. Ossola • 286 pages

available for pre-order. ships November 2026.

Support indie publishing by buying direct.

“You can smell the stone dust in this richly imagined and deeply researched book.” —Michael David Lukas, author of The Oracle of Stamboul and The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

“How Long a Shadow swept me into a world I didn't want to leave.” —Daniela Petrova, author of Her Daughter’s Mother

“I loved these people so much; I was truly sorry when I turned the last page . . . unforgettable.” —Stephanie Cowell, author of The Man in the Stone Cottage and Claude & Camille, American Book Award winner

In 1903 Barre, Vermont, granite is king—and it’s killing the men who sculpt it.

While her father and brothers risk their lungs in the granite sheds and the town fractures over union strikes, twenty-year-old Rosina Bottinelli longs for a life shaped by her own hands. Determined not to be bound by marriage, she sets aside her artistic ambitions and turns to midwifery. Her apprenticeship to her formidable aunt reveals both the fierce power and the terrible cost of women’s work.

But Barre is a tinderbox. A deadly lung disease—mal d’america—ravages the immigrant stonecutters. Labor unrest erupts into violence. And a bitter political rift between Rosina’s unionist father and his capitalist brother threatens to shatter the family that crossed an ocean together.

As love and loyalty collide with ambition and belief, Rosina must decide what kind of life she will carve—and how long a shadow she is willing to cast.

by Cheryl A. Ossola • 286 pages

available for pre-order. ships November 2026.

Support indie publishing by buying direct.

In a recent essay for Women Writers, Women’s Books, Cheryl A. Ossola explores the real family history and immigrant labor roots behind How Long a Shadow.

From the author

“Intimate and sweeping, How Long a Shadow is a powerful historical novel of immigrant life, family loyalty, and hard-won female awakening.”

—Judith Turner-Yamamoto, author of Loving the Dead and Gone

“Ossola is a writer of extraordinary empathy and precision.”

—Daniela Petrova, author of Her Daughter’s Mother

Further praise

“How Long a Shadow is a love letter to all the ways we make art, seen and unseen.”

—Marco Rafalà, author of How Fires End

“Ossola's compelling novel follows an arc of gestation—labor, transition, and howling life.”

—Carol LaHines, author of Miracle Grow of the Mind, The Vixen Amber Halloway, and Someday Everything Will All Make Sense