Like Lesser Gods is a 1949 novel by Mari Tomasi about the Italian-American stonecutters of Granitetown (a fictionalized version of Barre, Vermont), and their dedication to the work despite the danger of silicosis.

For years, Maria Dalli pleads with her husband Pietro, a granite carver, to take up a less dangerous line of work.

Later, Maria finds out that Pietro has been hard at work on what he considers his masterpiece: a granite headstone in the form of a cross, "smothered" in vines.

Her plan fails: when the workers arrive the next morning, it is obvious to everyone, including the boss, that Pietro's work has been deliberately sabotaged.

[1] In The Italian American Novel, Rose Basile Green writes, "The point of Like Lesser Gods is that the work men do is their participation in the divine order of creation.

That book, Men Against Granite, takes its title from a passage in Like Lesser Gods, when Pietro's doctor is preparing to deliver the bad news: "Stonecutters were all the same.

Green wrote, "More than a document of regional history, Miss Tomasi's book is an evocative and symbolic story, a lucid picture of America at work, a colorful weaving of the Italian ethnic experience into the American tapestry.