The snags, sorrows, secrets and estrangements of familial connections are ripe themes explored in the fiction of British author Katy Regan. In How to Find Your Way Home, she astutely--and with great empathy for her characters and their predicaments--plumbs the depths of one family torn apart by a simple moment in time that upends lives and fates.
This deeply moving story of siblings Stephen and Emily Nelson is set on Canvey Island in Essex, England. The first scene, set in 1987, lays the literary groundwork: Stephen, as a child, eagerly awaits the happy homecoming of newborn Emily. It is clear that brother and sister are bonded from the start, and sensitive Stephen will spend his life looking out for and remaining extremely protective of his baby sister.
The tender innocence of this opening chapter is shattered when Regan pushes the timeline forward to 2018: Stephen and Emily are now adults in their 30s and have been estranged for 15 years. Revealing the separation--filling in the gaps that uprooted and unsettled both of their lives--becomes the focus of the story.
Regan is a meticulous, graceful writer whose insight on the human condition makes for a completely absorbing story. As in her other novels (Little Big Love), she presents a full, well-balanced picture--tragic, yet buoyed by hope--of the far-reaching influences of family dysfunction. Love, sacrifice and loyalty along with chilling betrayals and rejections are strong undercurrents that ultimately shape and mold blood ties and destinies forever. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines