Homecoming

Kate Morton

I first discovered Australian novelist, Kate Morton, when I found her first three novels in a garage sale several years ago. Since then, I’ve read every book she’s written. When I learned that she’d published a new novel in April of 2023, I immediately put my name on a waiting list with our regional library system. Obviously, Morton’s books are popular because the list was already long and I had to wait many months before Homecoming finally arrived.

I knew when I picked up the book, all 544 pages of it, I would have a hard time putting it down. Thankfully, it came at a time when most of my Christmas preparations were complete and I could sink into the story without too many distractions.

On Christmas Eve 1959, a terrible tragedy rocks the small town of Tambilla in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. A local man makes a terrible discovery; a mother and three of her children lying dead on a picnic blanket looking as if they are asleep. The youngest child, a baby, has disappeared without a trace.

Almost 60 years later, having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, journalist Jess Turner-Bridges returns to Australia when her beloved and very elderly grandmother suffers a fall and is seriously ill in hospital. It’s only then that she hears for the first time about the Turner family tragedy of 1959 and begins to try to unravel the mysteries surrounding the deaths and the baby’s disappearance.

Homecoming is an epic novel that spans generations. It’s a gripping story of deeply buried family secrets, sins, and sorrows. It touches on themes of family, motherhood, home, loneliness, loss, identity and belonging. It’s a book you won’t want to put down!