Mara and the Stones of Stonewater. Cover illustration of a young girl and an older woman beside a large stone disc, with a tall ship in the harbor behind them.

Piketown Press

Mara and the Stones of Stonewater

A Story of Memory, Money, and the Truth That Cannot Be Taken

By Brian Connelly

52 pages · 6 × 9 inches · Paperback and ebook

A story for young readers about memory, money, and the truth that cannot be taken.

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About the book

Every civilization discovers, sooner or later, what money is actually for. On the island of Stonewater, the lesson is carved in limestone.

The great discs that serve as money are quarried at terrible cost from across a dangerous sea. Each one is witnessed by every person on the island. Each one is held in shared memory: a ledger no single person can falsify, because too many people hold it at once.

When the trader Castor arrives offering something new, Stonewater has to decide what it believes money is. Ten-year-old Mara, apprentice to the keeper of the memory, watches it happen. And when the trader tries to rewrite what is remembered, she is the one who must stand up and tell the truth.

About the author

Brian Connelly writes about money, technology, and the things that make both of them honest. After thirty years as a Fortune 500 technology consultant and a parallel career in clinical social work, he has spent the last several years helping ordinary people understand why sound money matters and how to use it safely.

He is also the author of How to Keep Your Bitcoin Alive and Well and Alice in Bitcoin Land. Mara and the Stones of Stonewater is his first book for young readers.