Thunderstone

‘There is just one object I want to carry inside the van… It was believed lightning would not strike a house that held a thunderstone. I place this fossil on the windowsill, its surface gleaming like cat’s eyes ahead of me on a dark road.’

In the wake of a traumatic lockdown, Nancy Campbell buys an old caravan and drives it into a strip of neglected woodland between a canal and railway. There is no plumbed water; no electricity point; walls as thin as a Kinder egg. But it is the first home she has ever owned.

As summer begins, Nancy embraces the challenge of how to live well in a place in which possessions and emotions often threaten to tumble, clearing industrial junk from the soil, forging unconventional friendships off-grid and helping the wild beauty surrounding her to flourish.

But when illness and uncertainty loom once more, she has to find a way to hold on to beauty and wonder, to anchor herself in this van, this safe space, this new home.

An intimate journal across the space of a defining summer, Thunderstone is a celebration of the people and places that hold us when the storms gather; a soul-shaking journey that reminds us what it is to be alive.