Clues Lead to Long-Held Secrets

by Mary Olson

Book: “Homecoming”

Author: Kate Morton

Rating (out of 5 possible):

Kate Morton is an author to know for readers who enjoy a rich story full of secrets, decrepit mansions that have seen the best and worst of family life, and complicated characters searching for the truth they need to make the puzzle pieces of their own lives fit together.

Morton’s latest novel, “Homecoming,” is one of the best in her catalog.

Set in South Australia, the narrative alternates between the events and aftermath of Christmas Eve 1959 and 2018, when a young woman has returned home to take care of her grandmother at the end of her grandmother’s life.

The dual timeline adds to the slow-building suspense and sets the perfect pace for the novel.

On a sweltering Christmas Eve afternoon, a delivery man on the Turner family property makes a horrific discovery: Mrs. Turner and all of her children are dead, lying peacefully beside the stream and looking as if they all had been napping after a holiday picnic.

Nearly 60 years later, the crime is still unsolved as Jess arrives back in Australia after learning her grandmother, Nora, has taken a fall and is rapidly declining.

Jess and Nora have a close bond despite Jess having moved to England.

Nora was the mother Jess needed when her actual mother, Polly, could not (or would not) handle the responsibilities of raising a young girl as a single parent.

When Jess realizes Nora fell on her way to the attic, a place Jess was strictly forbidden to enter, her journalistic instincts take over.

Jess discovers a book about the Turner tragedy of 1959 and begins to piece together her grandmother’s connection to the Turners.

Themes of motherhood and identity combine with the corrosive nature of long-held secrets in a small community to reveal a stark and shocking truth hidden for decades.

Morton’s deft plotting deliberately leads the reader away from solving the mystery too early.

“Homecoming” is a masterful novel about a brutal yet unsolved crime, hidden love affairs, a beloved matriarch with more than her share of secrets, and three generations whose individual motives and decisions affect a far wider circle than they could have imagined.

Mary Olson is the readers’ advisory librarian at the Medina County District Library. To learn more about her, go to https:// bit.ly/3gZ1mg1