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.' So begins the story of Clementina Smith, a young girl when she gives birth to her illegitimate son, Elijah. Other girls have been put out on the highroad for less, but Clementina's Dei and Dadus stick by her and Elijah grows up greatly loved by his small but tight-knit Romany family. And then, he meets a non-Romany girl... Clementina thinks Rose Childer is a snooty, lower-class gorjer (non-Romany). Rose thinks Clementina is the mother-in-law from hell...

From the farms of the Fenland in the 1870's through the backstreets of Victorian Cambridge to modern-day Peterborough, Stone Cradle charts the history of three generations of one extended family. How do Travellers adapt to a century that no longer seems to need them? And what is everyone to do, when two women in a family hate each other other?