14 h 58 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does a town lose when the stone beneath it becomes a source of wealth?
In Flamsted Quarries, Mary E. Waller brings you into a New England community built around stone. Quarry work sets the rhythm of life: stone is cut, hauled and sold, and neighbors depend on the work it brings. Yet the wealth drawn from the ground carries a human cost, and profit is tied to risk.
Ambition pulls people toward more than their hometown can offer. Greed raises harder questions about what that hunger costs others. Against these pressures, Waller sets the hope of redemption—the possibility of choosing another course. This quiet, character-driven novel explores work, conscience and the choices that shape both a person and a community.
What you’ll discover
- A town shaped by stone Enter a community whose daily life follows the cutting, hauling and selling of stone.
- The pull of ambition Consider the choice facing someone who wants more than a small town can give.
- The cost of greed Look beyond wealth to the people who bear the risks behind quarry profits.
- Room to change course Find hope in a story that sets the possibility of redemption against greed.
- Questions close to home Explore how work and neighbors bring larger questions of conscience into everyday life.
Who will love it
Readers who love stories of small towns, immigrant newcomers and family secrets will find a home here. It suits anyone drawn to a spirited orphan heroine, a wise priest, and a young man's tangled ambitions.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A child's song stirs three listeners
- Two orphans find a Marchioness across the street
- A priest and an orphan arrive in Flamsted
- Aurora Googe stakes everything on her son
- Six years change the town and its people
- Love and pride collide at the lily-pad reach
- A treasurer chases wealth until it breaks him
- What the novel says about money, love and strangers
- How the author tells it, with song, stone and stream
Who’s who
- Aileen ArmaghA spirited orphan with a splendid singing voice who grows up in Flamsted and wants a home and a love she can trust.
- Champney GoogeA charming, athletic young man who wants to get rich fast and learns what his ambition costs.
- Father HonoréA French-born priest with a hidden past who serves the quarrymen and watches over Aileen and Champney.
- Aurora GoogeChampney's proud, beautiful mother, who sold her land for her son's future and carries an old sorrow.
- Almeda ChampneyThe wealthy, miserly widow of Champ-au-Haut, who takes in Aileen and holds a bitter grudge against Aurora.
- Octavius BuzzbyThe faithful handyman of the Champney estate, who loves fair play and quietly champions the Googes.
- Colonel Milton CaukinsA cheerful, talkative promoter of Flamsted who believes in the town's industrial future and loves his large family.
- Luigi PoggiA hardworking Italian fruit seller who loves Aileen from the days of the asylum fence and wants to belong in America.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 14 h 58 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 15 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Cave di Flamsted in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Cave di Flamsted
by Mary E. Waller · 1910
A match girl sings on a vaudeville stage, and three men in the audience will never be the same.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Flamsted Quarries is a novel by Mary E. Waller, an American writer who died in 1938.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A child's song stirs three listeners
The novel opens in a New York vaudeville house. A small girl called the Little Patti plays a match girl in a snowy street scene and sings The Holy City to a gallery that roars its approval. Backstage, she throws a tantrum, because the man who sent her flowers is in a box again and she wants to sing him a quieter song. Her real name is Aileen Armagh, and she is about to change three lives.
She returns to the footlights and sings There Is a Green Hill Far Away. The noisy house falls silent. A woman sobs, and a rough gallery fan jams a wool cap into the mouth of a man who means to hiss. The author tells us that a simple song can reach people whose lives run in opposite directions.
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What is Flamsted Quarries about?
It follows a Maine town changed by a granite quarry, and the orphan Aileen Armagh, the ambitious Champney Googe and the priest Father Honoré, whose lives meet again and again between New York and Flamsted over about twenty years.
Who is Aileen Armagh in Flamsted Quarries?
She is an Irish-born orphan and former child singer who is sent from a New York asylum to live at Champ-au-Haut in Flamsted. She is lively, loyal, quick-witted and deeply musical, and she is the heart of the story.
Is Flamsted Quarries a true story?
No, it is a novel by Mary E. Waller, set mostly in a fictional Maine town. It draws on real conditions of the granite industry and immigration around 1900, which gives the setting a believable feel.
The author
Mary E. Waller
1855–1938 · American writer and educator
Mary E. Waller (1855–1938) was an American writer and educator born in Middlebury, Vermont. Her full name was Mary Ella Waller. She worked as a teacher and wrote novels. Her books include The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus, published in 1904, and Flamsted Quarries, published in 1910.
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