Reviewed by Ioana Marza for Readers' Favorite

Limestone Wall by Marlene Lee follows the return of Evelyn Grant to her hometown - Jefferson City - after forty years of absence. Recently widowed, Evelyn feels a pull to her childhood home, which is just across the street from the town’s prison with its limestone walls where her mother is serving a life sentence. She rents out the top floor of her former home and reacquaints herself with the town and old friends, as well as making some new ones. Through them, she finds her way into the prison where the mother she hasn’t seen since she was a child lives a hermit life. Around this time an execution is due, which unsettles the town.

Limestone Wall is similar to normal life; nothing spectacular happens and yet it is meaningful and absorbing and hard to rationalize. Evelyn cannot explain why suddenly, after forty years, she feels the need to see her mother, other than the fact that she is very lonely after her husband’s death and her children leaving home. Her friend Roz cannot help playing mother to convicts who might or might not need her. This instinct to be reunited with one’s mother, the yearning for maternal love (whether to give or receive) is profoundly human and any reader who lost their mother or child would connect with that.

Marlene Lee is not trying to prove any principles or answer big life questions - the execution itself is a background event that is relevant for Evelyn’s friend, rather than a statement for or against the death penalty. The characters are believable and interesting and the story moves in a subtle way. Evelyn is close to finding a relationship again, but nothing is rushed or overly romantic. Two people in their fifties approach each other in a realistic underplayed way, exactly as I would expect it to happen in life, as opposed to the movies. Limestone Wall captures humans and their fundamental feelings - loneliness, love, being lost and confused - in a thoughtful and unpretentious way. It's a very pleasant read.