Description:
In My Way Home, teenage lovers separated by war and the denial of a woman's choice, encounter each other sixteen years later, forcing secrets to be revealed.
Brief description: Mary Bonina is both poet and prose writer. My Way Home is her debut novel. She is the author of My Father's Eyes: A Memoir, and three published poetry collections: Living Proof, Clear Eye Tea, and Lunch in Chinatown. Her poem "Drift", won the UrbanArts "Boston Contemporary Authors" prize, and is engraved on a granite monolith, a permanent public art installation in the City. She has been honored as a fellow and awarded several residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, including at the VCCA retreat in Auvillar, France. Her collaborative art experiments with composers, visual artists, and sculptors, have expanded poetry's vocabulary and reach. A long time member of the Writers Room of Boston, where she served on the Board of Directors for more than a decade, Bonina is a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Review Quotes:
"Mary Bonina's captivating debut deftly explores themes we all must wrestle with during our short stay on planet Earth. How do we live meaningful lives while harboring dark secrets and gaping loss? What do we settle for when we cannot get what we want? What does family really mean? Written with great wisdom and acuity, My Way Home is a beautiful novel, full of truths about the human condition, the ways we delight and disappoint one another, the ways we save each other with our generosity and love.
-Mary E. Mitchell, author of Starting Out Sideways and Love in Complete Sentences
"-A cautionary story all too relevant to a time when a woman's right to control her body is somehow still-infuriatingly-unsettled."
-Gish Jen, author of Bad Bad Girl
"My Way Home is an often unsettling, always engaging novel full of honesty, heart, and grace. It is both seductive and disturbing, and it will remind you of why you started reading stories in the first place-to be carried away to a more vivid and compelling world."
-John Dufresne, author of My Darling Boy
"-A potent, provocative, and important novel."
-Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of How Many Miles to Babylon?
"-Bonina's novel is a haunting look at first love, teen pregnancy and the dangerous secrets about to erupt in a family. Magnificent."
-Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder and Pictures of You
"...My Way Home delves into a world of secrets, forgiveness, and 'a new idea of family.' Beautifully written...I loved it."
-Rosie Sultan, author of Helen Keller in Love and winner of the PEN Discovery Award