An idea living in Sheryl Wilson’s head for years has now become three-dimensional in a new book.
Wilson is vice president for culture and belonging at Bethel College. She and Caitlin Morneau are co-authors of The Little Book of Restorative Justice and Community: Reclaiming Connection and Responsibility for Our Neighbors, released April 10 by Good Books, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing.
Morneau is director of restorative justice at the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), where she has led the co-creation of several major publications, and hosts the CMN podcast Encounters with Dignity. She has an M.A. in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.
Wilson came to Bethel in November 2017 as executive director of the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (KIPCOR). At that point, she already had years of experience as a restorative justice (RJ) practitioner.
“Long before coming here, I had been thinking about the way we talk about stakeholders – victims, offenders, the community – in restorative justice,” she says. “There is lots of literature for and about how we attend to the needs of victims and offenders, but what about the community?
“About a decade ago, I proposed the idea [of writing about restorative justice and community] to Barb Toews, the editor who oversees the ‘Little Books’ series.”
Good Books launched the “Little Books of Justice & Peacebuilding” in 2002 with Howard Zehr’s now classic The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Wilson and Morneau’s book will be #25 in the series.
Toews was “encouraging,” Wilson says, “and also said, ‘You may want to consider having a co-author.’ She left it with me to find one. But this was 2017, and then I came into this extremely busy new job [at KIPCOR]. But I held onto the idea.”
In 2021, Wilson joined the board of CMN, which is how she met Morneau. “One day, Caitlin made a comment that let me know she was thinking similarly to me about the need for [RJ] resources for communities, for how people become good neighbors.
“I said to myself, ‘I think I’ve found my co-author.’”
Wilson asked Morneau if she’d be willing and she said yes. In 2023, they had a Zoom meeting with Toews. In November of that year, they submitted a book proposal, which consisted of an introduction and the co-written first chapter, and got the green light.
Wilson and Morneau got together in person in Kansas for a writing retreat, where they created an outline and figured out where their individual passions lay in order to “assign” each chapter.
“I took a lot of delight in thinking about the fact that the goal of a restorative community aligns with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Beloved Community,’” Wilson says.
“You don’t have to shoot for perfection, but you have to keep choosing each other and staying connected even when it feels hard.”
The book “has been well received” by people who have read the pre-publication manuscript. Zehr along with RJ heavyweights Fania Davis and Mark Umbreit “all gave their time and endorsements” as blurb writers.
Wilson and Morneau will be part of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice webinar series on April 10 to officially introduce The Little Book of Restorative Justice and Community, talk about the reasons for and process of writing it, and read from the book.
“I saw The Little Book of Restorative Justice at about the time I started graduate school,” Wilson recalls. “I realized that restorative justice was where I wanted to direct my energy.
“ I have always been a fan of these books. They are easy to access and digest. They give people wings, because they’re not just about the [particular topic], but they tell you how people in real-life scenarios play them out.”
For more about The Little Book of Restorative Justice and Community, see https://rjandcommunity.my.canva.site/
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel is ranked #25 in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Regional College Midwest for 2026. Bethel was the only Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Community Healing and Transformation (TCHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
