Homecoming by Kate Morton

Title: Homecoming

Author: Kate Morton

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 4^th April 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 640

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: The highly anticipated new novel from the worldwide bestselling author of The Clockmaker’s Daughter, a spellbinding story that begins with a shocking crime, the effects of which echo across continents and generations.

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959:

At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia.

Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in hospital.

At Nora’s house, Jess discovers a true-crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only when Jess skims through its pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this notorious event – a murder mystery that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

An epic story that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, how we protect the lies we tell, and what it means to come home. Above all, it is an intricate and spellbinding novel from one of the finest writers working today.

~*~

In the Adelaide Hills in 1959, tragedy struck the small town of Tambilla on Christmas Eve – Percy Summers, riding home from work, stops to let his horse swim in a small creek on the grounds of a grand house. Yet as he does, he discovers the Turner family – Isabel, and her children, dead, and baby Thea’s basket empty. From here, the novel starts to go between 1959 and 2018 as Jess, a journalist, comes home to tend to her grandmother Nora, but there is more to uncover about her family history – a murder mystery, and a connected to a place called Halcyon that she has been wondering about for years. Jess finds an old book written about the family tragedy and as she reads it, she uncovers the truth – or as much of it as possible. It is a story that spans generations and addresses the idea of family and love – how far would we go to protect our family and what would we do if they hid a secret from us for years.

Kate Morton’s latest is a return to in my opinion, her best storytelling. I have read all her books, which have similar themes, yet I think the two that stand out for me are The Forgotten Garden, and her latest, Homecoming. I like that they navigate the complexities of families and the various aspects of love and ways of loving your family and community, and a novel that crosses the continent of Australia – South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland. It captures the heart of a family, the things that keep them together, but at the same time, the things that can tear them apart or keep them separated as long-held secrets tease at the edges of the story, a mystery that has so many layers, not all is what it seems, and even when things look to be straightforward, they never will be, and it takes the whole novel to unravel things, to unravel the truth behind the mystery that instigates the events of the novel.

I liked the way this was done – I had an idea of what might happen part way through, but then, just as I thought I had worked it out, there would be a spanner thrown into the works to make everything seem as though it wasn’t going to be easy to work out. And there were many secrets that needed to be hidden for many reasons – secrets that people carry with them throughout their lives, and cling on as though they will lose everything – which was the drive behind Nora’s relationships with Polly and Jess, and her determination to keep many things from them. The story was compelling and allowed the characters to grow and evolve throughout as it passed backwards and forwards from 1959 and 2018, slowly dropping hints but also reiterating what we know from the early chapters about the Turner tragedy and Jess’s family history, so we’re aware that this is what we need to know – this is what we are being told, and, this is what we should always understand and never question – at least in terms of the characters to a point, because they of course, eventually start asking questions. As the reader however, I could see from the beginning that not everything we were being told was necessarily true, and I felt like I could work out what might be, but it was the journey of getting there that was important – I wanted to see how the characters worked it all out, how they came to terms with what had been done or what they had done, and how that informed their lives going forwards.

I loved this book – I like books that flick between different time periods, because I think these books have something more to them than those set in a singular setting, something different. It allows for a different story to be told, which is just as powerful as one told in a singular setting or time period. Both have their merits, and Kate Morton has managed to pull off the incorporation of the past and the future in an elegant way with a story filled with mystery and an array of emotions that dictate how the characters respond to each other and what is going on around them, and works to reunite some characters with each other, and delve into the truth of the past at the same time to bring a story to life. Much like the secret garden of Misselthwaite Manor, this story is one that comes to life as the reader works with the words and characters on the page to bring it to life, and the secrets within spring forth unexpectedly. I also loved the love of books that the characters had and what it means for them as they go through the story and their lives.

I am so glad to see  return to the Kate Morton I know from The Forgotten Garden, as it presents us as readers with a stronger story and one that has a smaller cast of compelling but powerful characters who, are in some way, linked to everything that happened and each other – and often in ways that we never thought was possible until we turn the final pages and everything falls into place as it always does with a well-crafted plot and story. I hope that fans of Kate Morton enjoy her latest book.