The Stone Sister - by Caroline E Patterson (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes Author's note and Author interview.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2020 Big Moose Prize

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. In fact, that sister's name was also Caroline Patterson.

Review Quotes

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

About the Author

Caroline Patterson is the author of The Stone Sister, winner of the 2021 Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press and the 2022 High Plains Book Festival prize for women's fiction. She published the collection Ballet at the Moose Lodge, the anthology Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart, which won a gold Willa Prize and two children's books on the natural world. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and received awards from the Montana Arts Council, the San Francisco Foundation, and Henfield Foundation. She retired in 2023 as executive director of the Missoula Writing Collaborative.