Homesick Creek: A Novel [Paperback]

Diane Hammond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2006

Diane Hammond’s beautifully rendered description of life in the fictional small town of Hubbard, Oregon, won her plaudits for Going to Bend, her debut novel. In Homesick Creek, Hammond returns to Hubbard and captivates us once again with a cast of characters so vivid we feel like we’ve known them all our lives.


Anita and Bunny have been friends since high school, when Anita was a beauty queen runner-up and Bunny a sweet single mother with average looks. They were both taken by surprise when the handsome, charismatic Hack Neary chose Bunny to be his wife. A natural-born salesman, Hack now works his charms at the local car dealership, and he and Bunny enjoy a very comfortable life. But after sixteen years of excusing Hack’s white lies, Bunny is more shaken than she’d like to be by his dangerous new flirtation and her rising suspicions that Hack never meant to put down roots in Hubbard.

Anita has also married, but unlike Hack and Bunny, she and her husband are barely scraping by. Bob isn’t ambitious enough to properly support his wife and daughter. He is, however, constant in his love: for Anita, still beautiful in his eyes despite the toll of age, work, and poverty; for his daughter and granddaughter, who need more than the couple can provide; and for Warren, his best friend since they were poor and unwanted children in the same trailer park.

Facing a future that seems increasingly difficult, the friends turn to one another and find reserves of love and strength that help heal the wounds they inadvertently inflict on each other. At the deepest point of her grief, Bunny realizes, “If you loved somebody once, no matter how long ago, that had to be worth something.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Is marriage a test of how little one can live with—or how much one can give? Hammond tackles this thorny question in her second book about Hubbard, Ore., where the only through street is a highway, work is seasonal and everyone's known each other since forever. The two couples at the heart of this wise, moving novel are diner waitress Bunny and her car salesman husband, Hack, who have more money than love, and Bunny's best friend, the once lovely Anita, and Anita's secretive spouse, Bob, who have more love than money. They're all a good 20 years into their adult lives, plenty long enough to darken their vision of marriage, but not long enough for them to get insight into their own misbehavior. Hammond carefully investigates the good motivations and stark damage fueling her character's self-deceptions, bad decisions and, yes, beautiful gestures, telling her story with spare language and good humor that easily encompasses rich commentary on marital physics. And in that journey comes more than one answer about the test of marriage—witness Anita, who asks for the least and suffers the most. "See?" she tells Bunny. "You think you know all there is to know about someone, and then it turns out you didn't know a damn thing."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Living in a predictable Oregon town--the same Hubbard of Hammond's well-received debut, Going to Bend (2003)--friends Bunny and Anita are as close as ever, despite paths that diverged with their choices of husbands. Bunny's husband, Hack, is charming and generous but haunted by memories of a lost sister. Anita's Bob is weak and frequently drunk, struggling with demons of his own. What these men keep from their wives drives the story only slightly less than the wonderfully developed characters. The novel unfolds with masterly timing and begs full attention, but it is these characters and their relationships that are the core of the novel. The hard-luck tone here might easily have come off as folksy, but Hammond's writing is impeccable, and the characters she has created are as true and lively as they come. This is a fine and touching novel, despite just a couple of brief, overly tidy scenes in the final pages. Hammond should have known we didn't need conversations with the dead to see the ghosts that live in Hubbard. Annie Tully
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (November 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345460995
• ISBN-13: 978-0345460998
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A native New Yorker, Diane Hammond spent the majority of her school years in Upper Nyack, NY. After graduating from Nyack High School, she attended and earned a BA from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Hammond first began writing in Washington, DC, cutting her teeth on short stories and attending classes at the Glen Echo Writers Center in Glen Echo, Maryland, and joining a number of ad hoc writing groups. Her first short story was published in Woman's World, followed by others in Mademoiselle, Yankee Magazine, the Washington Review, and other periodicals.

In 1984, she moved to tiny Newport, Oregon (pop. 9,000), on the central Oregon coast, a writer's paradise with its relative isolation, constant winter storms and harsh beauty. She began maturing artistically there, discovering themes and settings that have resonated in her writing ever since.

Hammond's first novel, GOING TO BEND, was published by Random House/Doubleday in 2003, with particular acclaim in the Pacific Northwest, where the book was set. HOMESICK CREEK, her second novel, followed in 2006. Her third novel, HANNAH'S DREAM, was released by Harper Perennial in 2008 and has become a bestseller; her fourth novel, SEEING STARS, was also released by Harper Perennial in 2010.

She currently lives in West St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband Nolan, four cats and two Pembroke Welsh corgis.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An examination of friendship, love, and family dynamics underneath a seedy portrait of small-town life, August 2, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homesick Creek: A Novel (Hardcover)

Anita, runner-up in a local beauty contest, hit her physical peak in high school, soon to grow fat with childbearing and heredity. Bernadette, fondly nicknamed Bunny, finds herself a man too good-looking to trust, so she doesn't. Hack Neary is just too smooth, the used-car-salesman kind of smooth. In fact, he's exactly that --- a used car salesman, one with a roving eye and maybe a roving, uh, something else. Bunny certainly suspects him at every turn, and it's making Hack crazy.

Anita, on the other hand, is confident of Bob's love. He may be a drunk and a loser, but he's no cheat. His devotion to Anita is true. But when he starts disappearing for long periods without explanation, Anita can't help but wonder why. Does he have some shameful secret, or has he fallen --- one more time --- off the wagon? She has very little time, however, to worry over it because their daughter has moved back home with granddaughter Crystal. Between daycare and the extra mouths to feed, Anita finds almost no chance to sit and mull things over. Plus, she is just so tired.

Meanwhile, Bunny has noticed Hack acting oddly. He seems distracted and does not pay as much attention to her as he used to. Could he be having an affair? There's a real looker working down at the dealership with him who seems mighty attentive, and then there's the time Bunny picked up the phone at home and heard a woman whispering to Hack.

Nearing 40, both women find themselves disillusioned with life. Bunny has plenty of disposable cash, but Anita can barely make ends meet. Her usually cheery outlook starts to wane. "You know what you end up asking yourself?.... How little can I live with...and how much do I need? And the answer keeps getting smaller, and your marriage keeps shrinking." Maybe things would have been different if Anita and Bunny had left the gray, sodden wide spot called Hubbard. But despite all that weighs them down, their friendship remains steadfast.

The two women are by no means model spouses. But maybe Hack isn't as bad as his wife thinks he is. And then maybe Bob is worse than his wife thinks he is. Whatever the case, none of them is a saint. But who in this world is?

While HOMESICK CREEK is, on the surface, a look at the seedy side of small town life and the ugly side of the people in it, ultimately it weighs in as a story of genuine friendship, love gone wrong, and families in crises.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Homesick Creek, July 24, 2007

By 

Bettina Katz "Bettina Katz" (Camano Island, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homesick Creek: A Novel (Paperback)

Like her first novel, Going to Bend, Hammond's story is set in rural, coastal Oregon. She is a master at setting the scene -- you can almost taste the ocean. Her characters speak to you like old friends, even if you've never known anyone like them...but you have! This second novel is dark -- be prepared to face life's challenges head-on. But the messages sent are as strong as lighthouse beacons: friendship and kindness are what get us all through the dark times. I can't wait for her third novel.

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching and compelling, January 5, 2010

By 

Linda C. Wright (Viera, FL) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Homesick Creek: A Novel (Paperback)

Homesick Creek came to me after being recommended by Leigh Anne Jasheway. Leigh Anne critiqued a manuscript of mine at last summer's Willamette Writer's Conference. She didn't like my manuscript much especially since I practically fell asleep in her lap. At the end of three long days of learning, pitching and socializing I was pretty well beat. Leigh Anne told me that Homesick Creek was a wonderful study in character development. I took her advice on this one and I'm glad I did.

Homesick Creek is the story of unlikely characters thrown together in the wet, foggy soup of the Pacific Northwest. I knew from the beginning Hauk was hiding something, but what? Early on I learned Bob's shocking secret and watched him carefully hide it from the rest of the world. Bunny thinks Hauk is hiding something else from her not knowing the real truth. Anita loves Bob so much she's blinded by what is going on around her.

Slowly the author peels back the components of each player. I felt Bunny's jealousy of Rae Macy and Rae's frustration of living in a place that she felt was far beneath her. Anita tried desperately to keep her family as a unit amid poverty and Bob's lack of ambition. These characters were real with real emotions. I felt them in each breath they took. Leigh Anne is right.

Linda C. Wright

One Clown Short