Homeplace [Mass Market Paperback]

Anne Rivers Siddons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 1988

Micah (Mike) Winship was ordered out of her parents' home twenty years ago. But now her father is dying and asking for her. Tired of her New York life, she heads back down South, and is forced to confront a past that includes an older lover, an overindulged sister, and the surprising and inexplicable pull of a place called home....

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A native of Lython, Ga., Micah Winship left town at age 18, after a bitter breach with her father caused by her involvement in the civil rights movement. Twenty years later, she is a noted journalist, a mother and divorcee. At a low point in her career, just as her daughter has left to spend the summer in California, Mike hears from her sister DeeDee, who writes asking for help with their dying father. In a particularly vulnerable state, Mike goes home. Brittle and sharp-edged, repelled by DeeDee's transformation into a mountainous caricature of would-be gentility, unmoved by her father's battle to stop the Department of Transportation from building a highway through his parents' farm, the "homeplace" that has never meant much to her, she intends to stay only a few weeks. But she is caught up in a passionate affair with Bayard Sewell, a shining figure in the local political firmament whom she had loved as a girl. On a trip to the farm with her father and the Bible-quoting, rough-edged lawyer who is his only supporter, Mike begins to understand the old man's attachment to the land and reluctantly agrees to join the fight. In the process she finally plumbs the depths of her own anger and falseness, finding resources of compassion and strength. About love and death, greed and passion, the pull of family and the push of self, Homeplace is a deeply moving story of a fierce and necessary forgiveness. Siddons also wrote Heartbreak Hotel and The House Next Door. 35,000 first printing; $35,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Micah Winship is a successful journalist living in New York City, a troubled childhood in small-town Georgia far behind her. Her father's illness, however, brings her back to the home she had fled in fury and disgrace 20 years earlier in the wake of a family storm concerning Micah's growing interest in the Civil Rights Movement. Now, in this hot summer visit, the past encroaches on the present, and Micah is drawn back into the family politics and sexual drama of her adolescence. For all its psychological overtones of guilt, difficult love, and the burden of childhood scars, this novel is basically a romance, complete with white knight. The prose flows easily and creates an evocative atmosphere of summer in the Deep South. Laurie Spector Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright Index Project, Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 361 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345354575
• ISBN-13: 978-0345354570
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,758,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb Read, Emotional Roller Coaster With Inspiring Finish!, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Homeplace (Mass Market Paperback)

"Things are rarely as they seem." That perhaps sums up this wonderful book concisely. Micah (Mike) Winship returns home after a 20-year estrangement from her father who is now dying. Never being close to the man and long a "worldly" woman, Mike is looking to recapture a simpler life. She soon learns that the basic things she once eschewed (family, land, love) are the greatest aspects of life. She reconciles with the great love of her young life who is anything but what he seems. Mike's one-time beautiful older sister has her own plans for the future and the protagonist soon finds herself allying with the man she never dreamed she be close to and a mysterious outsider who plays his way into her trust and heart. This book will appeal to all romantics and those who are close to their family (or wish that they were). It is a novel of the heart and leaves you wanting more. This book will stay with you for a long time!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Of Home and Hope and Family, October 4, 2000

By 

Mamalinde "mamalinde" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homeplace (Mass Market Paperback)

Somehow I missed this particular book when it came out, though I've been a Siddons fan for a long time. Interesting companion to her newest book NORA, NORA, with a similar pivotal character in virtually the same setting. This is a tale of coming home and discovering your history, with plenty of betrayal and love along the way. Micah Winship, works through a pretty awful childhood and becomes an award winning journalist, when her world collapses and she finds herself called back to Lytton, Georgia. Ms. Siddons is a Southern writer who can make you feel heat, humidity and actually breath the air along with her characters, who also breathe and live and languish. Excellent portrayal of the south with well sketched, believable characters. The story is thought provoking and hopeful.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deeply Moving Story of Forgiveness, August 26, 2003

By 

M. Rondeau (West Springfield, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homeplace (Mass Market Paperback)

Micah "Mike" Winship was going home to a place she'd fled in 1963 when her father had thrown her out. It's twenty years later, she's become an award-winning journalist, and has not spoken to her father in all that time. A plea from her sister, Dee Dee asking her to return and help with their father who was dying from prostate cancer and wanted to see her came at a point in Mike's life where she virtually had no other place to go. Mike's world was collapsing around her and she needed a place to go - to re-group, and pull herself together, even if it meant facing the man whose love and acceptance she had tried to gain during her awful childhood. What Mike finally discovers, after more betrayals, is the heart, soul and essence of the man she called `daddy' and a real place called `home'.

This was my first book by this author whose eloquence with the written word is so outstanding that she slips under the skin of the extremely well sketched characters and lets you breathe their air, and pump their blood. You will laugh, cry, and feel each emotion as the author sketches the life of a memorable journey taken by the youngest daughter of coming home again. Totally thought provoking and believable. This is an outstanding classic novel that I see why it has been resurrected and reissued for a new generation of readers to embrace!