Stone Yard Devotional

by Charlotte Wood · 2023

Burnt out and yearning for escape, a middle‑aged woman abandons her Sydney life and marriage to return to the stark plains of the Monaro, seeking refuge in a secluded religious community she barely understands. Though she doubts God and has never known prayer, the quiet rhythm of monastic life soon gives way to unsettling intrusions: a relentless mouse plague that threatens the settlement, the shocking return of a sister’s skeletal remains after a decades‑old disappearance, and a mysterious visitor who drags her back into buried memories of her mother’s early death. As each disturbance forces her to confront questions of goodness, forgiveness, and the limits of hope, the novel becomes a meditative exploration of grief’s lingering business and the fragile possibility of redemption. Charlotte Wood’s lyrical prose, praised on Booker Prize shortlists and by major newspapers, offers a haunting, deeply moving portrait of a woman learning to live with the past while searching for a new kind of faith.