Stone Yard Devotional

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good.

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.Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of nonfiction. Her 2016 novel The Natural Way of Things won the Stella Prize in her native Australia and was joint winner of the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her 2020 novel, The Weekend, was an international bestseller.