When harm happens, where do you fit?
The Little Book of Restorative Justice & Community helps you locate your place in the work of healing, accountability, and repair — whether you are the family, the neighbor, the teacher, the chaplain, or the one who stayed.
Good Books144 pp · $24
"Community is not a place — it is what is invariably harmed, and what must be invited into every moment of conflict and repair."
— From the Authors
A practical path to healing.
Restorative justice is often taught as a script: open, speak, close. This book treats it as a practice — a way of paying attention to the people who have been hurt, and to everyone the harm has quietly rearranged around them.
Naming Harm
Before repair, there is naming. Who was hurt, in what way, and by whom — without softening the wound or inflaming the room.
Facilitating Dialogue
Decide who is in the room, who sits beside them, and who holds the edges. The circle is a decision, not a default.
Rebuilding Accountability
The hardest work happens after the words. A repair is only as durable as the follow-through it is met with.
Six chairs in the room.
Written for the people who show up to harm — not as the hero, not as the witness, but as the one who stays.
Secondary Victims
Families, partners, siblings — the people harmed twice by what happened to someone they love.
Community Supporters
Neighbors, congregants, and volunteers who carry the work between formal meetings.
Educators
Teachers and school staff who need language for harm the classroom cannot resolve alone.
Practitioners
Facilitators, mediators, and case managers looking for a shorter, more honest field guide.
RJ Advocates
Organizers and policy staff building the infrastructure for restorative work in public systems.
Faith Leaders
Pastors, rabbis, imams — leaders who already hold the room and are learning to hold it differently.
Available now, in print and digital.
Hardcover, trade paperback, and e-book from Good Books. A portion of every sale supports free training for community facilitators.
No one should sit with harm alone.
A restorative process only works when the community is willing to lean in. This part of the book is devoted to the quiet work of building that lean — the relationships, habits, and small institutions that make repair survivable long after the first conversation.
Chapters
Field Notes
Pages
Voices of experience.
Author
Sheryl Wilson
Restorative Justice Practitioner · Facilitator · Trainer
Sheryl Wilson brings decades of experience in community mediation, restorative circles, and peacekeeping. She has trained educators, faith leaders, and practitioners across the country in practices that center dignity, repair, and accountability.
Author
Caitlin Morneau
Educator · Writer · Community Justice Advocate
Caitlin Morneau works at the intersection of education and restorative justice, helping schools and communities build cultures of belonging. She writes and speaks on the responsibility we share when harm happens.
What the room is saying.
"I have taught restorative practice for nine years, and this is the first book that told me what to do on the Tuesday after the circle."
"As a chaplain, I have fumbled this work for years. It named what I could not, and without a single page of jargon."
"The chapter on secondary victims is the single most important thing I have read in this field."
The book, in the room.
Bring restorative justice to your campus or organization.
The authors offer keynotes, workshops, and training programs tailored to your community's needs — restorative justice workshops, faculty and staff development, faith-based circle training, and campus conflict facilitation.
Speaking & training inquiries.
Interested in bringing restorative justice to your organization? Tell us about your community and we'll follow up with availability and formats.