A decades-old mystery comes to life in Kate Morton’s Homecoming. This lengthy novel alternates between 1959 and 2018, telling the story of a family tragedy and how it affected family and community members in a small Australian town. The book opens with the stunning discovery a man makes when he finds an entire family dead on a picnic blanket on Christmas Eve. What happened to the Turners? Who would want to harm this young mother and her children? The infant napping in the basket nearby has disappeared. Was it a kidnapping? When investigators come to their conclusions, the town believes it has the answers to these questions.
Jess has moved away from her Australian home to London. However, Nora, the 90-year-old grandmother who raised her, has an accident and she is called to come home to Darling House, the estate where she grew up. At the hospital, a distraught and possibly confused Nora says things to Jess that she doesn’t understand, so Jess, a journalist by trade, starts asking questions. Will she uncover the truth behind Nora’s accident? What will it mean for her family?
Homecoming is a dual-timeline historical fiction mystery told from many points of view. It includes the full text from a fictional true crime book about the Turner family tragedy. With its numerous characters and story-within-a-story format, the book is 547 pages in length. The story starts off strong and pacing is quick, yet my book club and I agreed that it could have been a great story with a hundred pages cut out. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of the characters, the timelines, and, as a result, who knows what about the mystery.
I would argue that if Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie, then Homecoming is a Christmas book. If you’re looking for something “less cozy” this holiday season, curl up with a cup of cocoa and delve into the Turner family mystery in Homecoming. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Claire Foy does a lovely job. It was not available from my library but it was on Spotify with my premium membership.
