Can we ever understand the decisions our loved ones make? This is the story of the Wayside Chapel, a quiet revolution from a side street of Kings Cross, Sydney.

Alana Valentine’s mother, Janice, was remarried in 1969 at the Wayside Chapel, run by the charismatic and controversial minister Ted Noffs and his wife Margaret. Many years after her mother died, Alana found the wedding photo, and the longing to speak to her mother about that day drove her to seek out others who had begun new chapters of their lives at Wayside.

What Alana found was a remarkable group of people, whose stories are told here with kaleidoscopic effect. Wayside is a uniquely Australian institution where people have been welcomed for decades in spite of social taboos around race, class, religion and sexuality. Over the years, the likes of Ita Buttrose, Andy Gibb and Jane Powell have been married there, and the Chapel has been supported by famous ambassadors such as David Wenham, Claudia Karvan and Leah Purcell.

Told with grace and insight by one of Australia’s most acclaimed playwrights, Wed by the Wayside is a deeply personal quest and a vibrant chronicle that reshapes our understanding of this country’s social history.

‘Compelling … evocatively captures why the Wayside Chapel is the beating heart of our community.’ Indira Naidoo, Wayside Ambassador and broadcaster

‘This mosaic of memoir, reportage and social history is – like the man and community at its centre – warm, spirited, inclusive and gently but unapologetically radical.’ Emily Maguire, author of Love Objects

‘Alana Valentine’s extraordinary body of work is animated by her big-hearted curiosity and wry intelligence. In Wed by the Wayside, the voices of Sydney’s outliers and heretics join chorus with Alana, as her childhood returns via objects, personal catechisms, a tangy city street. Here is her dry-witted, chain-smoking mother. Here are the oil refinery towers and fragrant local vernacular of her childhood. Poignant and compassionate, this vivid portrait of Sydney’s rulebreakers asks vital ethical questions about longing, belonging, belief and love.’ Mireille Juchau, author of The World Without Us