Stone Cradle - Softcover

'Elijah Smith was born in the graveyard of the church at 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.' Clementina is barely sixteen when she falls pregnant. Other girls had been put out on the highroad for less, but Clementina's Dei and Dadus stand by her. But the Travellers are treated with suspicion wherever they go, and soon the family are rounded up by the 'gavvers', accused of poisioning local livestock. As the Romany people struggle to survive the changes of the twentieth century, Louise Doughty charts one family's path through persecution and tragedy, asking, can the Romany spirit survive in a century that no longer has space for them?

Louise Doughty is the author of five novels, CRAZY PAVING, DANCE WITH ME, HONEY-DEW, FIRES IN THE DARK and STONE CRADLE. CRAZY PAVING was shortlisted for four awards including the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and FIRES IN THE DARK won awards from the Arts Council of England and the K.Blundell Trust. She is also a recipient of an Ian St. James prize and a Radio Times Drama Award. She has written five plays for radio and worked widely as a journalist and broadcaster in London, where she lives.