Spanning the mid to late 20th century and set in the Elkhorn Valley of southwestern Montana, The Stone Sister tells the story of a child' s birth, disappearance, and discovery in a home for " backward children." Told through the voices of a father, nurse, and sister, the novel is hailed by award-winning writer Ann Patchett as "beautifully written and compassionately told...a novel that will stay with me for a long, long time." The story explores the power of family secrets and society' s evolving definitions of " normal" - as it pertains to family, medicine, and social structure and sheds light on the beginnings of the disability justice movement a family reckons 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 was written out of her family history. Her name was also Caroline Patterson.
