AMERICAN dry stone waller and writer Whitney Brown will be launching her new book ‘Between Stone and Sky’ at a free event at Farmers’ Welsh Lavender, near Builth Wells, on Sunday (May 20) at 11am.

Heralded as a “love letter to Wales” the book documents how at the age of 26, Whitney met and fell in love with a Welsh dry-stone waller at a folk life festival in Washington DC.

Within weeks she was out on the hill with him in rural Wales, learning the language of dry-stone walling.

‘Between Stone and Sky’ describes how, far away from the pressures of her old life, she found deep satisfaction in working with her hands, in the age and heft of the stones, and the ring of the hammer and how, being out under the open sky, relishing every sore muscle and smashed finger, “gave me the opportunity to stand atop a wall I’d just built and feel like the strongest woman alive...this new found love of Wales and ancient craft decimated all of my previous life plans”.

Whitney is currently based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia but tries to return to Wales as often as she can. Originally from South Carolina, she has a Masters degree in Folklore from the University of North Carolina.

Between Stone and Sky is a celebration of the raw and rugged splendour of the Welsh countryside and the enduring beauty and relevance of traditional craftsmanship. It is an unflinchingly honest account of the emotional struggle to become and belong and has been described as “an empowering story of female friendship, accepting uncertainty and risk, and crossing oceans in pursuit of dreams.”

Whitney will be speaking at Hay festival later on in May but this is a chance to hear her first and in the intimate surroundings of a small stone barn with magnificent views of sheep and lavender. She will feel at home: “We moved tons of stone each day by hand in a place that, to me, felt like heaven, rough and exposed though it was. There were hillside streams, waist-high bracken, hawthorn trees turning red with the onset of autumn. Clouds tumbled and swirled above us. A gentle commingling of dank grass, lanolin and mud scented the air. Our only regular company were disinterested sheep, tearing away at the grass all day.”

This event, which is a first for Farmers’ in their newly renovated stone barn, is free but please RSVP to [email protected] or ring 01982 552 467 to assure a seat.

Whitney Brown will be in conversation with Emma Beynon, local writer and sailor, and there will be chance for you to listen, laugh, ask questions, buy the book and enjoy a Sunday morning high in the hills of Wales where it all began.