The Walk Home
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Stevie comes from a long line of people who have cut and run. Just like he has.
Only he’s not so sure he was right to go. He’s been to London, taught himself to get by, and now he’s working as a laborer not so far from his childhood home in Glasgow. But Stevie hasn’t told his family—what’s left of them—that he’s back. Not yet.
He’s also not far from his uncle Eric, another one who left—for love this time. Stevie’s toughened himself up against that emotion. And as for his mother, Lindsey . . . well, she ran her whole life. From her father and Ireland, from her husband, and eventually from Stevie, too.
Moving between Stevie’s contemporary Glaswegian life and the story of his parents when they were young, The Walk Home is a powerful novel about the risk of love, and the madness and betrayals that can split a family. Without your past, who are you? Where does it leave you when you go against your family, turn your back on your home; when you defy the world you grew up in? If you cut your ties, will you cut yourself adrift? Yearning to belong exerts a powerful draw, and Stevie knows there are still people waiting for him to walk home.
An extraordinarily deft and humane writer, Rachel Seiffert tells us the truth about love and about hope.
This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seiffert, author of the Booker-shortlisted The Dark Room, turns to her former hometown, Glasgow, for this thought-provoking novel. As in her previous works, Seiffert illuminates historical and political issues through harrowing personal dramas. The story opens "now, or thereabouts," as construction foreman Jozef dreams of finally earning enough money on his current building project to allow him to return to Gdansk, Poland, where he hopes to convince his estranged wife to make another go of their marriage. The Polish workers don't understand young Glasgow native Stevie's presence on their work crew, but neither do they question it, especially after he uses his skills as a burglar to retrieve supplies belonging to the crew that a former employer has locked away. A second narrative strand, beginning in the early 1990s and eventually intersecting with the present-day story, reveals Stevie's troubled upbringing in Glasgow. His parents, Eric and Brenda, both from Irish Protestant backgrounds, fell out over Eric's involvement with a hardline anti-Catholic group. Throughout, Seiffert questions whether it's possible to transcend a legacy of conflict without escaping your background altogether, and considers what life feels like when the concept of "home" is far from safe or simple.
