Homecoming TPB

The much-anticipated new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Clockmaker’s Daughter, an intricate and immersive saga with a cold case mystery at its heart.

When someone said, ‘I want to go home,’ what they really meant was that they didn’t want to feel lonely anymore. Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of the grand and mysterious house known as Halcyon, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tumbeela 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 is unexpectedly summoned back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Stella, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.

Her entire life, Jess has believed in Stella’s immutability: her unshakeable confidence, her inspiring work, her stepping in to raise Jess when Jess’s own mother could not. So it’s both surprising and upsetting to see Stella in a hospital bed, frail and confused, and uttering the words: ‘He’s going to take her from me.’ Concerned for Stella, and at loose ends, Jess begins to dig into the one thing Stella always protected fiercely: her own family history. For Stella, it turns out, has hidden quite a lot from Jess under the guise of protection, including a shocking connection to the events of 1959, events whose effects echo across continents and generations . . .

Moving between the Adelaide Hills, Sydney and London, and between 1959 and 2019, Homecoming is a novel about the nature of truth, the meaning of ‘home’ and the corrosive effects of secrets hidden in plain sight. It is an exploration of the complexity and limits of maternal love and the instinctive desire to shield our children from the mistakes of the generation before, and a welcome return of one of the most enthralling and admired novelists of her generation.