Stone Yard Devotional

Praise for Stone Yard Devotional:

“Founded on the same rock of introspection that anchors the Gilead series….Stone Yard Devotional not only stays aloft but soars… A strange sense of engagement with these pages gives way to sheer gratitude for the chance to be in the presence of such restraint and wisdom.” –Washington Post

“The novel is, in many ways, an extended meditative vigil…Activism, abdication, atonement, grace: In this novel no one of these paths is holier than another; Wood is more invested in noticing the human pursuit of holiness itself.” —New York Times

“This meditative (but by no means uneventful) account includes a mouse infestation, a celebrity nun, a pair of complicated homecomings and countless reminders that the sacred and the profane not only coexist but complement one another.” —New York Times

“Ms. Wood’s pastoral novel is contemplative, curious, rewardingly conflicted and frequently beautiful. Ms. Wood writes … with exceptional empathy. Most contemporary fiction plays out inside the echo chamber of a protagonist’s psyche; its stories are devoted to confronting and working through a private trauma. But while Stone Yard Devotional is suffused with sorrow, it exhibits very little grievance. The narrator’s observations are sensitive and impersonal, and they yield profound insights into the commonality of suffering.” —Wall Street Journal

“Stone Yard Devotional is about one woman’s inward journey to make sense of the world and her life when conflicts and chaos are abundant in both realms. . . A fierce and philosophical interrogation of history, memory, nature, and human existence.” —Booker Prize judges’ remarks

“I have rarely been so absorbed by a novel . . . A powerful, generous book.” —Guardian

“A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged.” —Anne Enright

“A novel of austere contemplation and personal devastation, its narrative driven by moral crisis rather than worldly action …. reflections on mortality seep into its fabric. For this is not a book of answers. Rather, it is a challenge: about how to be in the world, and how to be alone.”—Times Literary Supplement

“A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life.” —Sunday Times

“Wood threads a contemplative path for believers and nonbelievers alike. Reading her prose—sanded to deceptive simplicity—feels like spending time with a dear friend. What if attentiveness and “habitual kindness,” the narrator seems to ask, are bedrocks of a moral life? A wise, consoling novel for disquieting times.” – Kirkus (STARRED REVIEW)

“A jewel-like, introspective novel in which not all that much happens, yet worlds are revealed…. With its absorbing and deceptively simple narrative, Stone Yard Devotional is a beautiful testament to the rudiments of shedding the unessential and living a life of intention.” —BookPage