The HOMEGOING is a reluctant trip back to a time and place we may remember, but would prefer to forget, only to find that what is most longed for is waiting there. Ruthie Sherman has made it out. She's shaken off all that she detested back home in the tiny foothill town where she grew up. A summer visit to Laurelville makes it clear, however, that the dysfunctional family, restrictive religion, and unshakable country speech still cling to her like mud from Laurel Creek. Curiosity about the suspicious death of her aunt Hannah eighteen months before Ruthie s birth, leads her through a town alive with whispers, to hills filled with dark secrets. Dartha, Ruthie s dreaded, faith-healing, herbalist grandmother, has secrets of her own, yet yearns for Ruthie's approval and, in the end, her own homegoing.
—Christina Lovin, Eastern Kentucky University, is the author of What We Burned for Warmth and Little Fires.