“Homecoming”
Kate Morton
(542 pages, fiction, 2023)
Jess Turner-Bridges is a journalist who has lived in London for the past twenty years.
We meet her in 2018 when she gets a call from Australia letting her know that Nora, the grandmother who raised her in Sydney, is in the hospital after a fall. Jess flies home immediately, thinking that maybe she can use this trip to rekindle her writing career as well as care for Nora.
When she gets to Sydney, she discovers Nora is much worse than she feared, and what little she says makes no sense to Jess.
In an effort to figure out what’s bothering Nora, Jess starts an investigation to find out what led her grandmother to try and get to the attic, resulting in the fall.
The book takes us back to 1959, when Nora’s sister-in-law Isabel and three of her children were discovered dead at their South Australia home.
Their youngest child, a girl, was missing when the other bodies were found. The tale is told from Jess’ perspective as she slowly unravels the story, aided by a true crime book written about the family.
As Jess investigates further, using clues from the crime book, we slowly learn more and more about Isabel and her family’s life and what happened in 1959.
This book is an interesting journey through time uncovering family secrets not known to anyone but Nora.
Jess learns the lessons her beloved grandmother taught her are not the only heritage she possesses and that everything she believes true is not necessarily so.
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Meredith Dahlrose
