India, Jan. 24 -- How did the idea for Stone Yard Devotional take shape?

Stone Yard Devotional grew from elements of my own life and childhood merging with an entirely invented story about an enclosed religious community. Writing it during pandemic lockdowns, followed by a period of time out owing to a serious illness - and the way these twin upheavals demolished so many of our consoling certainties - gave me an urgent instinct to shed anything inessential in my work. I wanted nothing trivial, nothing insincere in this book. And I wanted to try to master what Saul Bellow called 'stillness in the midst of chaos', risking a tonal restraint and depth that at the same time, I hope, pulses with energy.

I see now it explores some recurrent pr...