The Stone Sister

Book Description

The Stone Sister is the winner of the 2020 Big Moose Prize and due for publication in fall of 2021.

Spanning the mid- to late 20th century and set in the Elkhorn Valley of southwestern Montana, The Stone Sister is told from three points of view — a father’s, a nurse’s, and a sister’s. Together they tell the unforgettable story of a child’s birth, disappearance, and finally discovery in a home for “backward children.” Robert Carter, a newly married man just back from World War II, struggles with his and his wife’s decision to entrust the care of their disabled child to an institution and “move on” with family life. Louise Gustafson, a Midwestern nurse who starts over with a new life in the West, finds herself caring for a child everyone else has abandoned. And Elizabeth Carter, a young journalist, uncovers the family secret of her lost sister as she struggles with starting a family of her own.

The Stone Sister explores the power of family secrets and society’s evolving definitions of “normal”–as it pertains to family, medicine, and social structure. The novel sheds light on the beginnings of the disability justice movement as it follows one family’s journey to reckon with a painful past. Incredibly, the novel is based on Caroline Patterson’s personal story. As an adult, she discovered she had an older sister with Down syndrome who had been written out of her family history. And that sister’s name was also Caroline Patterson.

BUY IT NOW

Reviews

"In The Stone Sister, Caroline Patterson tells the moving story of how the decisions we make shape our lives and define our future. Beautifully written and compassionately told, this is a novel that will stay with me for a long, long time."
– Ann Patchett

"The Stone Sister is a remarkable story of empathy, sorrow, and tender reflection. It is Caroline Patterson’s own story transfigured through fiction into a larger truth. A Downs syndrome baby girl is born to a middle class couple in a small Montana city, hidden away in a mental institution, and deliberately forgotten until her adult sister learns of her existence and begins a painful and meticulous search. Told in the voices of a self-justifying father, a devoted nurse, and a questing sister, the lost child’s journey reveals the anguish, fears, and horrors that society inflicts on those who do not fit into its definitions of normal. This is a fable for our time–a story to inform and instruct as traditional ideas of identity and inclusion are being challenged in all corners of our smug old world."
– Annick Smith

"In this poignant and necessary novel, Patterson draws from her own family history to gently expose the secret shame of families who hid their developmentally challenged children in the 50s and 60s, a shame that lingered and touched the lives of everyone involved."
– Alka Joshi

"Daring and vastly compassionate, Caroline Patterson insists there is always more to the story, as The Stone Sister’s fearless characters confront the hidden truths of where they live and who they are."
– Susanna Sonnenberg

"Above all, because Caroline Patterson’s The Stone Sister is a retelling of the author’s own painful family history, it represents an extraordinary act of courage. This is a book with a big heart, the characters human, alive and compelling, the heartbreaking subject at its core consequential as blood."
– Kim Zupan

"The Stone Sister is a powerful meditation on family, caregiving, and secrets. Caroline Patterson paints a nuanced portrait of an era, its policies forged with good intentions and devastating consequences. Encompassing many parallels to today, the novel underlines the tragedy of turning away from those who make us uncomfortable."
– Janet Skeslien Charles

"Heart-breaking, riveting, and urgent, The Stone Sister explores forces more powerful than love: shame, secrets, expectations. Patterson writes like a dream. Flesh-and-blood characters and stunning prose make her debut an instant classic."
– Diana Spechler

Book Video

Excerpt

Mary and Bob were in sudden, close proximity after weeks of moving from hospital to home and back again. Through the roar of the Buick’s heater, Bob heard Mary’s breathing, could see her fingers moving as she tucked the blanket around the baby, adjusted her scarf, pulled down the rearview mirror to check her lipstick. The infant murmured, shifting in her bundle of blankets. They had picked her up in the nursery and moved on to Cecil’s office, signing papers for her release, papers that recognized them as parents, and papers that recognized the child as a ward of the Stone Home for the Mentally Retarded, even negotiated the awkward moment when some fool woman stopped them—mistakenly identifying them as a happy young couple heading home from the hospital with their newborn and began to gush, “Let me see the little darling,” and Mary looked at her sharply and Bob said, “We’re in a hurry, ma’am,” and they rushed past the hurt on her face and out the door to the shock of the below-zero, snowbound world and into the upholstered intimacy of the car.

The child’s face screwed up and she was about to cry when she was startled quiet by the grinding sound of the car starting. Bob shifted into first, pulled away from the curb, but as he headed toward the highway that would take them up over Beavertail Pass to the place that would house this child for the rest of her life, he felt suddenly panicked, as if he’d left something behind. He patted his pants for his wallet. His keys were in the ignition. Mary was beside him. He glanced over at the child’s dish-shaped face, the slanted eyes. This was it. He had to be ready now.

Mary stared straight ahead, her profile etched against the frost-crusted side window, inscrutable.

Bob launched the car onto the highway behind a logging truck, loaded with Douglas fir, correcting for the skid. They headed east into the ice-bound, unblinking morning.