The Trace Upon the Stone

Some things endure without ever being written.

A traveller’s notebook describes a family remembrance associated with Thomas the Apostle. Its author recorded the encounter carefully, then agreed to leave the telling itself unwritten.

For Claire Redmond, that decision opens an enquiry reaching from English archives to Christian households in Kerala. With James and Helena Vane, a scholar of early Christianity, she follows accounts whose differences may matter as much as their similarities.

But the closer Claire comes to the tradition, the less certain she becomes about what should be published, who has the right to interpret it, and whether some truths survive only by refusing to become scripture.

As Father Hugh’s health begins to fail, the search for an unwritten remembrance becomes inseparable from a more intimate question: what can be kept of a life, a voice, a love, when the words themselves cannot be held?

The Trace Upon the Stone is a novel of faith, memory, scholarship and loss – the conclusion to The Hidden Gospel Chronicles.

Forthcoming · publication date to be announced