Carrie La Seur makes her remarkable debut with The Home Place, a mesmerizing, emotionally evocative, and atmospheric literary novel in the vein of The House Girl and A Land More Kind Than Home, in which a successful lawyer is pulled back into her troubled family’s life in rural Montana in the wake of her sister’s death.The only Terrebonne who made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, … made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, with its bleak winters and stifling ways. But an unexpected call from the local police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she’d left far behind: Her lying, party-loving sister, Vicky, is dead. Alma is told that a very drunk Vicky had wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. But when Alma returns home to bury Vicky and see to her orphaned niece, she discovers that the death may not have been an accident.
The Home Place is a story of secrets that will not lie still, human bonds that will not break, and crippling memories that will not be silenced. It is a story of rural towns and runaways, of tensions corporate and racial, of childhood trauma and adolescent betrayal, and of the guilt that even forgiveness cannot ease. Most of all, this is a story of the place we carry in us always: home.
more
The Home Place is a very well-written book about the realities of life and love even in dysfunctional families with the added bonus of understanding and appreciating the vastness and beauty of Montana, “the Last Best Place.”
Alma is called home to Billings, Montana from Seattle for the worst possible reason. A death in the family. A family that has already been decimated by life overflowing with tragedy. It is the last place she wants to be, especially during the final stages of a case that can make her career as a lawyer in her high stress job. Guilt and a sense of duty bring her home to deal with her younger sister’s sad, and yes, suspicious death. What’s a little more stress in a competent young woman’s life? She gives herself six days to deal with the necessaries for Vickie and the twelve year old daughter Brittany she has left behind. Once there she must face her hard-hearted Uncle Walt and the ever-ailing Helen, his wife. Her brother Pete, winds up surprising her beyond imagination. There is also a disgusting businessman trying to buy her family’s old homestead by hectoring her sweet grandma Maddie, now that Vickie is gone, and a Native American detective who steadily works the case of homicide versus accidental death. And Chance. Hey, the story is in Montana, someone’s got to be named Chance! And yes, he was a rodeo star and has now been humbled (or smoothed out) by life.
There was so much packed into this wonderfully told story, and I loved reading every part of it. Alma gets body slammed by facing her hometown again. A lesser person may have been destroyed by that, but she proves she is a survivor. There are scenes where I had to suspend judgment and accept that justice sometimes gets complicated. Best of all, the author maintained reverence and awe for Montana in her prose, and the story ends just the way I wanted it to, for all the right reasons, and without tying everything up in a bow.
The details of the bleakness of Billings and the hardness of many residents who can trace their lineage back centuries, is part of the draw of the story. I have visited Billings only once, but it made me a little sad. There was a women’s prison right smack in the middle of town! However in the backmatter of her book Carrie La Seur gives a walking tour of her true hometown, Billings. Now I want to go back just to explore every step she suggests.
The book is written in an unusual tense that took me by surprise, but the beautiful prose quickly helped me get used to it. I highly recommend this gritty story filled with Big Sky beauty and the pain that vast blue firmament can command.
This book moved too slow for me. I did like the way the writer described Montana and the someplace.
I won a copy of this book and was not required to give a favorable review. This story tells a lot of how family sometimes doesn’t always do the right thing for each other but when the death of her sister Vicky, Alma come back from Seattle to help bury her, and take care of her niece. But there are so many more unanswered question and a whole lot more to be asked. This was a well written story
Alma Terrebonne left town as soon as high school graduation was over. She continues to run from relationships. One afternoon she gets a call from a detective in her home town. That is where the story starts. We learn about the secrets of a small town and family secrets. There is a mystery that I figured out about half way through, but it was still well worth the read. What stuck out to me was the phrases “There’s no place like home” or “You can’t go home again”. That’s what the story is about.
I enjoyed the story a lot. I’d recommend reading it.
While the outcome was predictable, the characters were interesting although many were not well developed or likable. The sense of place and the pull of family ties were well portrayed.