Long Way from Home [Paperback]

Frederick Busch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 1994

"AM I YOUR MOTHER?" The headline screams out to Sarah from the pages of the personal ads. Suddenly seized with an "emergency feeling," she abandons her husband, Barrett, and their six-year-old son, Stephen, to search for her biological mother in rural Pennyslvania. Barrett, convinced through intuition that Sarah has gone to Santa Fe, deposits Stephen with his in-laws and sets off in hot pursuit. From these separate journeys begins a chain of events in which individual memories send a family in desperate search of itself--and the shattering truth that awaits them....

From the author of Closing Arguments.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Responding to a magazine ad that may have been placed by her biological mother, Sarah Barrett abandons her Bucks County family and runs slowly to disaster--in this sedate, ruminative thriller from Busch (Closing Arguments, 1991, etc.). No sooner does Sarah's husband Barrett find his wife gone than he parks his six-year-old son Stephen with his in-laws in Burroughs, New York, and goes west to Santa Fe, inspired only by a vague feeling that Sarah's headed back to her spiritual roots there. But Sarah, driven by ``that emergency feeling'' (as she calls it in a cryptic note to Stephen), is much closer than that: she's gone only as far as western Pennsylvania, where her birth mother, Gloria Dodge, makes her meddlesome rounds as an herbalist/nurse. As Barrett sinks deeper into oblivion via a masochistic liaison with Santa Fe barfly Marylinn Conover and her unappreciative husband, Sarah decides that she doesn't like Gloria (``Call me Mother''), resents her own abandonment, and wants out of this woman's life for good. Too late: drawn by the promise of a grandson she's never seen, Gloria takes off for Burroughs, where she lures Stephen into her car and immediately starts to demonstrate why her giving away Sarah wasn't such a bad idea. Unlike Closing Arguments, which had the energy of authentic pulp, this one is weighed down by the characters' enervation; the pulpish plot is mainly an armature for Busch's reflections--mostly through Sarah's anguish over her impossible status as daughter, adopted daughter, and mother--about commitment, forgiveness, and the loss of innocence. Only Sarah's adoptive mother, Lizzie Mastracola (returning from Rounds and Sometimes I Live in the Country), has the starch to stem the general tide of lassitude. At his best, Busch seems to press for new ways to register characters, their language, and their relationships--but his best shines out only fitfully in this murkily conceived fable. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Absorbing, fast-paced and a joy to read."
--The Boston Globe

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 10, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449909220
• ISBN-13: 978-0449909225
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,538,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The perils of finding your birth mother, September 27, 2006

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Long Way from Home (Paperback)

Bringing together adoptive mother, birth mother, recalcitrant daughter, pawn grandchild and throwaway father, Busch seems to suggest that abortion has adoption beat hands down in this passionate but disjointed novel.

As the story opens, Sarah has abandoned her familywithout explanation. Distraught, her husband, Barrett, leaves son Stephen with Sarah's adoptive parents and heads for Santa Fe because Sarah liked the pottery. But Sarah is on a quest to meet her birth mother. Shifting viewpoints speed the plot and explore character.
Busch's depiction of 6-year-old Stephen is heart-rending. Outwardly calm, he is terrified. His grandparents, Lizzie and Will, cope as always, putting their private concerns on hold.

Sarah's quest unfolds as one long harangue and Barrett's search degenerates unreasonably. Gloria, the birth mother, is crazed -- because she gave up her child? It's hard to care what happens to any of them.

There are also some simple plot problems. Sarah heads home and Gloria, bent on kidnapping, follows. Hours behind, lost and without a map, Gloria still manages to beat Sarah. Then Lizzie and Sarah take off after Gloria and Stephen -- without a thought of informing the police and simply having her stopped.

Only Busch's writing could keep this turgid plot going. The words tumble and run, the characters steer by venal desires and lofty intentions. Yet Lizzie and Sarah -- apparently hurtling toward an explosive or illuminating climax -- banter as if their pursuit of Gloria is a cathartic girls' night out.

An odd book which gripped me until the last page when I picked it up and threw it against the wall -- figuratively of course.