The Home Place
By Carrie La Seur
(William Morrow & Company, Hardcover, 9780062323446, July 2014, 304pp.)
The Short of It:
Home is a place but it’s also something that resides within us.
The Rest of It:
Alma Terrebonne left Montana behind her when she accepted a position as a lawyer and made the city her home. But when her sister is found dead, she’s forced to return to the home place that she left behind.
Everyone knows how it is when you return home. If you left for a reason, then going back is not easy and that is very much the case here. The bleak winters, the isolation and the poor condition of the home place itself leave a lot to be desired, but at the same time, it’s home and there’s always a place for it within your heart. As I read this book, the conflict within Alma is obvious. There is a definite love/hate thing going on with being home, but at the same time, she is the “responsible” one and with her sister dead and her niece without a mother, she feels obligated to step in.
This tug of the heart, would have been enough to explore on its own but La Seur throws in some nasty dealings with mining folk making plays for the land, the ugliness of her sister’s death and some confusion over who she should be with romantically, the guy she left behind in Montana or her new love interest back in the city.
All in all, I think La Seur tried to give us too much at once. The result? Thin characters with very little substance. However, it read well for me. The flow of the writing was quite good which made it an easy and quick read. I’ve not read many books set in Montana and La Seur’s sense of place is strong in this one. This is one of those books where I find myself scratching my head a little because it was enjoyable to read, and yet, I felt it could have been so much more.
If you enjoy novels that explore home and what it means and you don’t mind some nasty dealings messing up your perfect picture of biscuits and gravy and fried pork chops, then I say give it a try.
For more information on the author, click here.
Source: Review copy provided by the publisher via TLC Book Tours.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.
Book Chatter 
It’s too bad that there wasn’t more focus here.
The writing showed some promise. Had she focused on one or two aspects of the story, it would have been much stronger.
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I’ve had this one on my kindle since it was published…I just need to get around to it. I’m wondering what drew me to it…maybe the Montana setting since my brother-in-law lives there?
I would have liked more of the Montana setting. I got a good feel for it but more would have been even better.
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I just received this book last week – I’ll be curious to try it now.
I like the concept so I’d be willing to try this even with characters that aren’t that great.
I can’t even imagine having to return “home” under those circumstances. Add to it a love/hate relationship with the place she is from. This sounds like an interesting book, even with its flaws. It’s a shame the characters aren’t better developed.
I am definitely one of those people who believes home is not necessarily a physical place, but rather where-ever my family is. I think that comes from a childhood of moving around and not really having a “hometown” to reference when people ask where I come from.
Same here, but I’ve never had a home that my family lived in or handed down. In this situation, she has some good memories of the place growing up but some people just can’t deal with the smallness of some places. I’d read another book by this author though. Her writing was pretty fluid but I am a characters person and had she spent a little more time with some of them, and not added the other story line to it, I think I would have enjoyed it more.
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I did really like this one…the lightness of the characters did not really bother me…
Now I want fried pork chops for dinner. Thanks, Ti. This one sounds good, but it annoys me when an author tries to serve up too much in one novel.
Too bad this one didn’t totally turn out to its full potential. It seems a good theme. I like the “going home” theme. And Montana too.
I haven’t read much set in Montana and I’m interested to see how the author conveys her sense of place so well.
Thanks for being a part of the tour!