Potluck and Prayer

Potluck and Prayer is a contemporary novel which is set in a Department of Education Senior High School, St Thomas's, located in northern NSW on the Queensland border. In 2016 forty-five-year-old, gay and recently bereaved Cait Ryan becomes its Principal. Particular students feature throughout, the most unusual, Theo, a duck. St Thomas's is an extreme example of departmental neglect: small grounds, rundown buildings, a book-less library, no funds, disenfranchised students, disinterested parents, poor reading standards.A gift of land from the neighbouring Queensland farmer, a student in the school's previous incarnation as a Catholic School, sets in train events affecting the school's fortune over the next two years. Cait bribes Year 11 to scatter grass seed over the donated field which they mix with marijuana and the farmer waters. NSW refuses to fund its incorporation and relinquishes the school to the Queensland Department. It rejects the school leaving staff without pay and students ineligible to sit state exams. Some staff and many Year 12 students leave. Fate intervenes: the local priest arranges for students to sit state exams at the Catholic school and the marijuana grows and becomes the illegal source of school finances. Ineligible to attract future students, more staff leave and two grey-nomad ex-teachers come to help. Gradually, students bond with staff over a student-run radio station, the effort to survive, a suicide.An image of Madonna and child is discovered on a pew in the school's chapel, 'she comes in times of need' explains an elderly nun and former Principal.A former lover appears to interrupt the flow of Cait's life, finally inserting herself in it. Two ABCTV documentaries in 2017 embarrass the NSW government and, in 2018, it reregisters the school. Mother Mary's work is done; her image disappears.