Cranny in the Rock

The Rosemary Tree, April 2024

Photo of a village church in Devon with daffodils by Glyn Dewis

“The cranny in the rock,” she said to herself... Here (in the church) she was inside the rock, lodged in her own particular cranny within the permanence, the shelter, the strength and fire. Rock of Ages... For once she was feeling peaceful, and happy, she who was always so depressed and restless. Seeds blow into crannies in the rock, dead-looking brown tho now hardly larger than grains of dust, and then unbelievably flower into snapdragons and valerian. It was miraculous how such gay things could grow in the rock.

💛Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree, chapter 2,

Developing characters

As we get going in The Rosemary Tree this month, it has struck me how dramatically the battle lines are drawn in this novel. From the beginning you get a sense that some characters are on the good side, and other on the bad side. But when you look a little closer, you see that there really are more characters right in the middle. Like most people, Goudge’s characters have choices to make each day that will pull them more in one direction or the other. They are changed by certain experiences, and they change others based on their reactions. Here are a few characters as they struggle in the murky middle of the tale.

Michael