Stone Yard Devotional: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 by Charlotte Wood

A journey of the self through solitude. Quiet and contemplative, written with deceptively simple and straightforward prose, Stone Yard Devotional is a tender meditation on hope and humanity from an acclaimed author.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend.

“Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you’ve heard.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind.” —Lauren Christensen, New York Times

"Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." —New York Times

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.

But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.

Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.