Author: Jean Thompson

Title: The Year We Left Home

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The year is 1973; the event is the Erickson family's oldest daughter's wedding; the subject is seventeen year old Ryan, the bride's younger brother. Ryan leaves the cake-and-punch reception at the Lutheran Church with the keys to open up the town's Legion Hall for the second reception that includes a band, dancing, and an open bar. Ryan sees himself and his future choices in the faces of his surrounding family.

Some of his relatives never leave their Iowa county as the impact of their lives exist primarily in their local community. His cousin Chip, on the other hand, has just returned from Vietnam and doesn't know how to balance where he has been, with where he is from, and where he is going. Ryan hasn't been to war, but has an emotional battle going on inside him.

His girlfriend wants a marriage proposal; his dad wants him to have a solid education and job; his mom wants him to stay close to home. Though all of these desires could be good, Ryan decides his family's expectations are strings that are holding him back and he determines to cut them all.

This first chapter of The Year We Left Home reads like a complete short story; each following chapter does as well. The novel hovers over this typical American family for three decades and zooms in on the specifics of one of the characters, a chapter at a time, during significant moments in their journey - a wedding, a funeral, a car wreck, a relocation, or a return visit home.

Each family member struggles with their identity and purpose apart from each other, while depending on their family bond to keep their lives in synch. Each character is deeply flawed and tragic and their viewpoints of each other skewed by their own emotional attachments.

The novel begs the question, "What if you hailed from the Great State of Alienation, proud home of the disillusioned, the crazed, the indifferent, the violent? How did it happen that some people lived unquestioning lives, never doubted their place in that enterprise called America, their proprietary involvement, their state in its success, while others turned away?"

Author Jean Thompson writes about America through the lens of this Iowa family and their values. The chapter snapshots themselves are beautiful to experience, but together they form a more complete picture of the life we think we want and the life we already may have. How much of our home is location? How much of it is family? How much of it is heritage? How much of it is purpose?

While Thompson doesn't preach a message with a contrived, emotional crescendo, noticeably absent from the novel are those moments in the Ericksons' lives that are touched with glory and rapture. Even ordinary people from Iowa can touch the divine, on occasion.

If you enjoy collections of short stories and beautiful prose, you won't want to miss this gem of an American novel.

*This article first published 5/31/2011