"Elijah Smith was born in the graveyard of the church in Werrington, a village in the Soke of Peterborough. I can tell you this for certain, as I am his mother and so was there at the time."
So begins the story of Clementina Smith, a young girl when she gives birth to her illegitimate son, Elijah. Others have been put out on the highroad for less, but Clementina's Dei and Dadus stick by her and Elijah grows up greatly loved by his small but tight-knit family. But then he meets a non-Romany girl…
From the farms of the Fens in the 1870s through the backstreets of Victorian Cambridge to modern-day Peterborough, 'Stone Cradle' charts the history of three generations of one extended family. How do Travellers adapt to a century that no longer needs them?
And what is everyone to do when two women in a family can hardly stand the sight of one another?
Wonderfully readable, funny and sad, Stone Cradle is a masterful evocation of the lives of two women confronting the changes of the twentieth century. Vivid, compassionate and beautifully written, it confirms Louise Doughty as one of the major writers and storytellers of her generation.
