Booklife Review

Chronicling one family's year from one Christmas to the next, Coming Home is a touching novel of four generations making peace with the past, healing old wounds, and rediscovering the joys of their youth. Lydia is living a nice life in New York City as a writer for the Architectural Journal, yet she is discontent with the trajectory of her life, feeling as if she is just going through the motions. Plagued by a dream of herself dancing in a meadow she vaguely remembers from her childhood, and the longings that dream suggests, Lydia returns to her childhood home in North Carolina. There, amongst her family—brother Daniel, mother Eugenia (Gigi), maternal grandmother Nans (Zipporah), great grandaunt Virginia, and father George—Lydia urges everyone to stop running from their past and "[return] to the earth" to face the loss they have avoided: the death of her brother, Evan.

Liss (The Last Resort) brings this warm but emotionally charged contemporary fiction to life through the narrative of a grieving family that has become complacent in their comfortable lives to the point of pushing away the people who care about them the most. Each member discovers they have never allowed themselves to heal or move on from tragedy and fully embrace the love and happiness that life has been offering all along.

The novel demonstrates the work that reconciliation and facing the past can take, but also the power of doing so: as this fractured family repairs its bonds and moves toward truly letting each other in, they all feel the light of the sun begin to shine on their world again. Coming Home explores the importance of "family members talk[ing] about their feelings,” all with a strong focus on the beauty of nature and art. Fans of novels that center around familial bonds, secrets, and self-discovery will find this resonant, with engaging, believable characters and a plot that’s drawn from life and stirs real tears.

Takeaway: A family's story of healing, growth, and the importance of home.

Comparable Titles: Rhonda McKnight's The Thing About Home, Scott Merry's Something to Wish For.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-