Can marriage be an act of rebellion? This is the story of 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 Alana 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. Brought together, these Wayside stories reshape our understanding of this country’s social history, from a uniquely Australian institution where people have been welcomed for decades in spite of social taboos around race, class, religion and sexuality.

Told with grace and insight by one of Australia’s most acclaimed playwrights, Wed by the Wayside is a deeply personal quest, as Alana searches for her own origin story. It is also a celebratory ode to the different, the discarded, the broken and the brave who changed the world from Kings Cross.

‘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