Review: HOMECOMING, Kate Morton

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• Published: 4th April 2023
• ISBN: 9781761185786
• 640 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and a small town becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.

Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.

Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused; it's even more alarming to hear from Nora's housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident, and that she fell on the steps to the attic - the one place Jess was forbidden from playing when she was small.

At a loose end in Nora's house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora's bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime - a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find…

An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth. Above all, it is a beguiling and immensely satisfying novel from one of the finest writers working today. 

My Take:

When Jess in London gets the phone call calling her to Sydney, to her grandmother's hospital bed side, she has no idea of what she is about to learn.  She has no idea what secrets her grandmother has kept over the years. She was brought up by her grandmother after her mother Polly went north to Brisbane but she has no idea why that happened. But she becomes aware that many things are troubling Nora and Jess becomes determined to find out what they are.

And so layers of secrets are revealed, beginning with a family tragedy in the Adelaide Hills sixty years earlier.  The story is told in two distinct settings, two distinct timelines, and several mysteries come to the surface. There are several narrative voices, in some cases the narrator doesn't have the full story either.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, working at the mysteries as titbits were revealed. Sometimes I guessed correctly and sometimes I didn't.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read

• THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN
• 5.0, THE LAKE HOUSE