Stones from the River is a unique story of a dwarf woman’s life in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century, a nice combination of underexplored perspectives in literature. Hegi expands beyond the life of Trudi Montag and encompasses several generations of the residents of Burgdorf as they deal with WWI’s aftermath and WWII. The novel is rich with detail and characters which range from complicated to quirky. My only complaint about the novel was that it was well-crafted – an odd complaint, I know. To me the novel gave me the feeling that the writer was someone well-versed in literature, who knows how to tell a story, someone who has studied the art of the novel and can very competently mimic the great authors, but it lacked a certain spark of genius that would have really set the book apart. I guess it was the problem of a well-written book with an interesting plot and well-developed characters, which just feels a little bit too rehearsed. But there are much worse things a book could be, so I still enjoyed it.