Wagons and Weathered Hands (Book 7) - Coming soon

There are stories that change you through their scale, their suspense, their noise. And then there are stories like Wagons and Weathered Hands—quiet, deliberate, and deeply felt—that move through you like the slow warmth of a shared fire. Green’s remarkable novel is not a tale of grand heroics or epic quests. It is, instead, a story rooted in companionship, resilience, and the silent understandings that grow between women and the dogs who walk beside them.

At the heart of the novel is Grace O’Dowd, a weathered travelling wool merchant, and her dog Fen. Grace is a woman of few words and long roads, whose life has been shaped by the pull of wagon wheels, the ache of joints that don’t bend like they used to, and the quiet power of craft passed from hand to hand. Fen, her brindle-coated companion, is not the sort of dog who performs tricks or seeks attention. He is constant. Watchful. A presence more than a pet.

Into Grace’s orbit comes Mia, a young woman adrift from her old life, untethered and uncertain, yet quietly drawn to the slow rhythm of the road and the hands-on truth of making. The story unfolds not in dramatic leaps, but in the careful accumulation of moments: shared tea by the fire, the learning curve of dyeing wool, the raw truth of a letter from a doctor that says more than anyone wants to hear. Throughout it all, Fen and, later, Bramble the cart horse too, become part of a shared language—non-verbal, grounding, real.

What sets Wagons and Weathered Hands apart is how Green uses the presence of the dog—not only Fen but the subtle, ever-steady cob Bramble—as emotional anchors. These animals do not speak, but they communicate volumes. Fen watches Grace when her knees falter, rests his head on Mia’s foot when words won’t come, nudges a hand here, refuses to leave a side there. He is not just a comfort but a measure of trust. His growing acceptance of Mia mirrors Grace’s slow softening. Fen knows what matters. And so do we.

The relationships in this novel—between Grace and Mia, between both of them and Fen—are not built on declarations. They’re built on work shared in silence, on the slow unfurling of trust, on long evenings stitching by firelight while the dog snores gently nearby. It is a portrayal of womanhood that is rarely centred: one of ageing with agency, of teaching without condescension, of enduring without bitterness.

The dog, ever-present, is not the story’s heart—but he is its pulse.

Carolyn Green writes with a tender, tactile sense of place and pace. The smells of nettle and smoke, the rasp of worn wool under the palm, the weight of an old dog’s head on your shin—these are the textures that make Wagons and Weathered Hands so immersive. It is a story that understands that the deepest connections are often wordless. That love, especially the kind between humans and animals, doesn’t need to be announced to be known.

For readers who seek stories of companionship, of intergenerational women finding common ground, of slow resilience and quieter kinds of bravery, Wagons and Weathered Hands is a treasure. And for anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of a dog and known, without a doubt, that they are seen—this novel will feel like coming home.

Grace doesn’t say much. Mia doesn’t always know what to ask. But Fen? Fen never needs to speak. He just stays.
And that, perhaps, is love.