Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

In 1978, the mother of Larkin, Gaelan and Bonnie Jones disappears during a tornado. Years later, Hope's children come back to Emlyn Springs, Nebraska to bury their father and come to terms with the disappearance that shaped their lives.

This book took me by surprise. It seemed to start off slowly and for the first 100-150 pages, I doubted that I'd even get through all 500+ pages. But somewhere after page 150, I realized that I couldn't put it down. I was intrigued by the adult lives of the children whose mother "went up" and never came back down. And I wanted so much to find out what happened to Hope.

This is also the story of their physician father and his long-time girlfriend and mistress Viney. Their long and complicated relationship reminds us that parents have lives outside their children. And that even as adults, children will not always know everything there is to know about their parents.

While Larkin overeats to fill the void left in her lift, Gaelan body-builds to keep himself strong, and Bonnie scours the landscape for clues to the past, the reader gets a glimpse into the past through Hope's diaries.

This book took a little longer to grab me than most, but once it did, it didn't let go.