One of my favorite novelists, Toni Morrison, returns with the breathtaking and brief Home (Knopf). Frank Money is a Korean War veteran, just returned to the ever-racist U.S., hospitalized for unspoken atrocities that have scarred him both physically and mentally.
Defeated, angry, and lost, he is shocked out of his stupor by his need to save his younger sister, who is gravely ill after being medically abused by the doctor she works for. Frank must get to her in time, and must take her back to the small Georgia town where they grew up together. Frank has always hated his hometown, but it is a journey he must take, to save his sister and himself.
Morrison’s novel is, as usual, beautifully written, and Frank’s journey, full of childhood memories and flashes of the war’s brutalities, is a journey of redemption. Home is the U.S. Home is Georgia. But ultimately, Home is family. Home is love. Home is memory.
— Chris Avena