Call Me Home

by Megan Kruse, Elizabeth Gilbert (Introduction)

Overview

Call Me Home has an epic scope in the tradition of Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves or Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and braids the stories of a family in three distinct voices: Amy, who leaves her Texas home at 19 to start a new life with a man she barely knows, and her two children, Jackson and Lydia, who are rocked by their parents’ abusive relationship. When Amy is forced to bargain for the safety of one child over the other, she must retrace the steps in the life she has chosen. Jackson, 18 and made visible by his sexuality, leaves home and eventually finds work on a construction crew in the Idaho mountains, where he begins a potentially ruinous affair with Don, the married foreman of his crew. Lydia, his 12-year-old sister, returns with her mother to Texas, struggling to understand what she perceives to be her mother’s selfishness. At its heart, this is a novel about family, our choices and how we come to live with them, what it means to be queer in the rural West, and the changing idea of home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990437031
Publisher:	Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	292
File size:	564 KB

About the Author

Megan Kruse is a fiction and creative nonfiction writer from the Pacific Northwest. She studied creative writing at Oberlin College and earned her MFA at the University of Montana, where she was awarded a Bertha Morton scholarship. Her creative writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine, The Sun Witness Magazine, Thumbnail Magazine, Bellingham Review, and Phoebe, among others. She lives in Seattle.

Elizabeth Gilbert is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which spent 199 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was also made into a film by the same name. She lives in Frenchtown, NJ.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/19/2015
Lydia and Jackson grew up hiding in the woods of Washington state whenever their parents fought; they had to help their mother, Amy, clean the house after their father, Gary, broke her arm. Kruse’s sweeping debut novel tells of a life punctuated by violence and underscored with fear—a life that Amy hopes has enough moments of beauty for her children. After a particularly bad argument, Gary pushes her out of the window, and she knows that this time, she must get her children away from him for good. After 18-year-old Jackson, torn between hate for his father and an intense desire for a father figure, gives Gary some potentially dangerous information about Amy, she is forced to flee with Lydia to Texas to start a new life. Burdened by guilt but determined to give her 13-year-old daughter a sense of hope, Amy reexamines her relationship with Gary, trying to pinpoint the moment when love became fear. Meanwhile, Jackson flees from smalltown Washington to Portland, and then to Idaho, where he finds work on a construction crew and falls into a passionate affair with Don, his married boss. The anxieties and ecstasies of this love carry him into adulthood and away from the brutality of his childhood. Amy, Lydia, and Jackson must redefine their own ideas of family as they try desperately to move on and make lives for themselves. A powerful story told with ferocity and grace. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

5 Under 35 Honoree
National Book Foundation

Megan Kruse is a young writer of raw and fearless talent and Call Me Home showcases all she can do. She writes here of harrowing lives — of a family bent and broken by violence, where each person is desperately trying to somehow grow toward light and liberation. In the process, she offers a most unlikely tale of hardness and hustle, of grace and loss, of painful love and tough breaks and the unimaginable paths we must all eventually take toward survival. —Elizabeth Gilbert, Author of Eat, Pray, Love

Call Me Home is an uncommonly powerful debut novel. Megan Kruse writes with great heart and intelligence as she crafts a gripping story from the shards of a broken family. —Jess Walter, Author of Beautiful Ruins

I’ve been a big fan of Megan Kruse for a long time, but Call Me Home left me astonished by her talent. Beautifully written, deeply felt and utterly compelling, this story of a desperate family separated and on the run is full of unforgettable scenes and richly imagined characters and heady suspense. It’s so vivid, it feels like my own memory. I recommend it with all my heart. —Dan Chaon, Author of Await Your Reply

Megan Kruse has written a tough, unflinching and very loving story about an isolated family trying to scrape by and find a way, one way or another, to survive. I was deeply moved by the lives of her characters and scared for them right up to the end. Just a wonderful book, in every way. —Beverly Lowry, Author of Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir

An urgent, beautiful book about love and its consequences, set against a backdrop of the unglamorized West. These characters will lodge themselves in your imagination, stick with you long after you’re done reading. A fine and original first novel. —Kevin Canty, Author of Winslow in Love

I’m not sure how Megan Kruse did it. Her first novel manages to be a swift yet contemplative story of how a family can love each other fiercely even when every heart involved gets broken. Through its cast of characters, she is able to focus on what makes a human life shine with joy or ache with conflict. Her writing is cinematic—going from intense close-ups to beautiful sweeping wide shots. Call Me Home is a multi-layered and deeply felt wonder. —Kevin Sampsell, Author of A Common Pornography

I can’t stop thinking about this book. Call Me Home is a harrowing, beautiful, and tender novel about the meaning of home, loneliness, and the endurance of love. Megan Kruse is a talented and fearless writer, and the prose is just stunning. Call Me Home is a tremendous accomplishment. —Carter Sickels, Author of The Evening Hour

Megan Kruse is a stunning and inspiring new voice in American literature. Her beautiful debut, Call Me Home, proves that even as the violence of our lives invents us, a story can do something like save us. Read it and stick it in your heart. —Ariel Gore, Author of The End of Eve

The language is stunning, and the book delivers all the satisfactions of characterization and story that I seek in a great novel. Cai Emmons, The Register-Guard

A powerful debut novel told with ferocity and grace. STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly

The art Kruse brings to her endeavor will carry the day. MICHAEL CART Booklist

What is home, and where is your life supposed to be, if where you are is a place of pain and fear? These are questions that arise in “Call Me Home,” Seattle author Megan Kruse’s impressively forceful debut novel. WINGATE PACKARD Seattle Times

Kruse’s evocative, often lyrical language serves her subjects well, so that what results is not unleavened pain but painful beauty, even hope. JULIA JENKINS Shelf Awareness

Call Me Home, packs quiet power… Kruse can craft a fine sentence. SARA RAUCH Lambda Literary

Megan Kruse’s first novel startles in its capacity for complexity... a blistering story of lightness and darkness, the power of family and the capacity we have to hurt those closest to us.” RACHEL HURN
The San Francisco Chronicle

Kruse’s quiet debut hints at a formidable literary power as she explores what it means to live with fear while also searching for some sense of home. JEANNE KOLKER Wisconsin State Journal



Kruse’s first novel startles in its capacity for complexity, showing not only the tempestuous nature of family love, but also the near-impossible task of breaking free of it. — BEST BOOKS OF 2015, The San Francisco Chronicle

In this beautifully written, haunting family drama, Kruse explores themes of abuse, fear, love, longing and home. An absolutely gripping read from an amazing debut author also recognized as a 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. —2016 AWARD WINNER, PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

From the Publisher