Charlotte Wood's latest novel Stone Yard Devotional tackles unresolved grief and a mouse plague

In 2022, Charlotte Wood had just finished the first draft of her new novel, Stone Yard Devotional, when she received the terrible news that her older sister had breast cancer. The "psychic calamity" of Wood's cancer experience found its way into Stone Yard Devotional. Unsubscribe from life Stone Yard Devotional is a novel about "grieving, love forgiveness" set in a religious community on the "very bare, beautiful, spacious" Monaro plains in New South Wales, where Wood grew up. "Stone Yard Devotional is a quiet, contemplative novel," says ABC RN's Sarah L'Estrange. "I've always been a bit productivity-obsessed and felt a bit guilty about lying around doing nothing, so I had to learn to accept rest every day," says author Charlotte Wood.