Home Away from Home [Hardcover]

Lorna J. Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2004

After the sudden death of her husband, Anna Rainey is emotionally unable to return to the home they shared. Instead she becomes a perpetual house guest-going from friend to friend, seeking the solace and security in their lives that she no longer feels in her own. Each friend offers a different kind of comfort. Offers of advice are everywhere: join a support group, reconnect with family, find a new man. But these remedies fall flat. Ultimately Anna+s survival-hard-won and precious-comes in her own time. Lorna J. Cook creates a strong and endearing voice in the character of Anna and keeps the reader rooting for her until she finally finds the strength to go home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cook takes a careful but sometimes smothering look at grief in her second novel (after 2004's Departures), as a 30-something Michigander mourns the untimely loss of her beloved husband. After Dill's death from a brain aneurysm, Anna Rainey finds herself emotionally unable to stay in their home. She wanders from friends' sofas to a dormitory room to a small apartment, sometimes experiencing visitations from Dill's ghost and often feeling guilty: her failure to fix the garage door may have kept him from getting to the hospital in time. As if her grief makes her a magnet for tragedy, Anna befriends Jay, who hit a boy with his car in bad weather, putting the boy in a coma; she also helps counsel Sheena, an Upward Bound kid who's lost her father, and tutors Celia, a 10-year-old struggling to cope with her mother's death. Anna's mother, too, can't quite let go of Anna's father, who died nine years earlier. It takes gumption to let one's characters roam about unhinged and inconsolable, recovering only on their own terms and in their own sweet time, and in doing so, Cook paints a lucid and realistic portrait of loss. But she also creates a slightly wearying read: all unhappy families may be unhappy in their own ways, but young widows mourn—and eventually heal—in fairly routine fashion.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (December 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312308191
• ISBN-13: 978-0312308193
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,460,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lorna Jane Cook was born in northern California, grew up in Michigan, and has lived in Athens, Greece; Philadelphia, PA; and Washington, D.C. She currently lives in Michigan with her family. With a B.A. in Psychology/Sociology, she worked in a runaway shelter, a group home for teenage girls, an emergency services agency, and also on Capital Hill as a legislative assistant before turning to writing full time. She is the author of OUTSIDE WONDERLAND, DEPARTURES, and HOME AWAY FROM HOME. "What I love about writing," she says, "is having a place to go that is always evolving. No matter what is happening in my real life, my writing world is separate and endlessly interesting. My hope is that when a reader steps into that world, he or she will be just as happy to be there as I was when I created it."
You can visit Lorna's website at: www.lornajcook.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Year and a Day!, January 13, 2005

By 

Nancy R. Katz "NancyK18" (NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Away from Home (Hardcover)

What does a 34 year old woman do when she suddenly loses

her husband? In Home Away from Home, the author Lorna J. Cook explores widowhood for one woman, Anna Rainey, a character you will be rooting for from the first page.

Anna, a list maker and academic counselor never expected her 36 year old husband to suddenly die from a brain aneurysm. And neither did she expect not to return to their home after his funeral. But for the main character of this book, becoming a widow sends her spiraling downward and the one place she can't get back to is her home. Moving from one friend to another over the course of a year and a day, Anna desperately tries to make some sense of her life and her husband's death. Although

she returns to her job after several weeks of being absent and even has a brief encounter with a younger man, she can't seem to go back to the home she shared with her husband Dill. Even the other members in her support group seem to be coming to terms with their loss but for Anna her life continues to be as if her feet were rooted in sand. How Anna finally copes and comes to the conclusion that as painful as widowhood is, life is for

the living, will have you cheering for Anna at the end and wishing her well.

Many years ago, the author Lynn Caine captured in her book Widow, her experience when her husbanded died leaving her with two small children. While Ms. Cook wrote a fictcional account of widowhood, it did remind me in many ways of Ms. Caine's book. Like the character in from Home Away from Home and the the grief stricken widow, Lynn Caine, decisions were made that others questioned. But then who can say how one reacts to this situations. And for both the true widow and the fictional one, everyoen around them gave advice and thought they kewn what was best for them.

Home Away from Home is a poignant and emotional book. It is well written and certainly opens ones eyes to what life could be like when the one you love is gone. In exploring how one woman looks grief squarely in the eye and then deals with the rest of her life, Ms. Cook also provides her readers with a character who will stay with them long after they close the book.

I look forward to reading Lorna J. Cook in the future. As the author Elizabeth Berg wrote in a blurb at the front of the book, "Keep an eye on Lorna Cook." I certainly plan on doing this and recommend you do too.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about widowhood that will touch everyone who reads it, February 24, 2005

By 

Lexie (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Away from Home (Hardcover)

Anna Rainey 's husband Dill dies at the age of 36. She

blames herself, because she did not have the garage door fixed,

and it delayed getting him to the hospital. Unable to forgive

herself , and also unable to return to their home without him,

she spends time with family and friends.

This book is far from maudlin. It's touching and witty. Who

knows how any of us would react to the death of a spouse. At

any age it has to be a very difficult thing to come to terms with.

I look forward to Lorna Cook's next book and I highly endorse

you read this one.