No Place Like Home [Hardcover]

Barbara Samuel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2002

Sometimes a wrong turn is the only way home. . . .

No Place Like Home tells the unforgettable story of a family bound together by tradition–and the emotional journey of an estranged daughter risking everything for a second chance at life and love.

Twenty-one years ago Jewel Sabatino left her childhood behind and never looked back. After a magical taste of fame, she found herself alone with a son to raise and not much else. She survived with the help of Michael, her one true friend. But now Michael is too sick to care for himself, and Jewel has run out of options. She leaves New York for the hills of Colorado, unsure if the family she ran from will welcome her back.

For Jewel, coming home is falling back into a world that smells of Italian restaurants and home-baked pies. It is the laughter of sisters preparing for a summer wedding, and the peaceful haven for a treasured soul mate’s last days. It also means facing the unforgiving eyes of a father betrayed by his favorite child–and letting go of a son who is ready to become a man. But most of all, it is the love she discovers in her own wary heart when Michael’s brother Malachi unexpectedly arrives on her doorstep.

Told with breathtaking insight and deep emotion, No Place Like Home is a joyful feast for all the senses, a vibrant bounty of love, and a tender life lesson to be savored long after the last page is turned.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Setting: Pueblo, Colorado

Sensuality: 7

Voluptuous Jewel Sabatino kicked over the traces of her Catholic Italian family and ran off with a guitar player when she was only 17--shaking the dust of Pueblo, Colorado, from her fast-moving feet. Her furious father disowned her while her mother and three sisters missed her desperately. When she's compelled to return 21 years later, with her 17-year-old son, Shane, and terminally ill best friend, Michael, in tow, her father still isn't speaking to her. Thirty or so members of her extended family are, however, and welcome her home with open arms.

Jewel isn't planning to return to Pueblo for good. She needs the sanctuary of the farm she's inherited in order to care for Michael, and when he dies she intends to return to her life in New York City. But as Jewel finds herself becoming more and more immersed in the familial web, she learns that the ties that once choked and bound now represent a loving system that both support and uphold. And when Michael's brother, Malachi, arrives, Jewel finds that love can happen at any age.

While the dominant thread in No Place Like Home is romantic, the novel also addresses universal family themes--from siblings struggling to find their own identities in a large family to the often painful and never easy bonds between father and daughter, sister and sister, mother and son--in a touching story of love and loss. --Lois Dyer

From Publishers Weekly

Over 20 years ago, the protagonist of romance writer Samuel's scrappy hardcover debut left high school and rode far from her Colorado home on the back of a musician's motorcycle. Now, at the age of 40, Jewel Sabatino lives in New York and has a gay best friend dying of AIDS, rancid memories of a nonmarriage to a nonstarter, a teen musician son, an estrangement from her father (with whom she "had not exchanged a single word in twenty-three years") and an unrelieved case of low self-esteem. When she learns, almost simultaneously, that she's inherited her great-aunt's house and that her apartment building in Greenwich Village is going condo, Sabatino knows it's time to go home. She, 17-year-old son Shane and ill best friend Michael Shaunnessey head for her third-generation Italian-American enclave in Pueblo, Colo. There she comes to terms with who she is, helped considerably by Malachi Shaunnessey, a "big, alligator-blood-drinking tough guy" who shows up to ease his dying brother Michael's last days, bringing more than just comfort to Jewel in the process. The sense of place is vivid, the secondary characters charming and many of Jewel's thoughts about her various and often conflicting roles and loyalties are all too recognizable and full of self-deprecating humor. But having established a high-concept situation, Samuel (Night of Fire, The Black Angel) leaves little room for surprises, and of the four main characters only Shane is allowed to display spontaneity.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (January 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345445651
• ISBN-13: 978-0345445650
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,758,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb book-what romance and modern fiction should be, March 10, 2003

By 

J. Mullally "booklover4ever00" (USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: No Place Like Home (Paperback)

I loved this book. It's not often a novel makes me cry, with this one I couldn' t stop crying, but laughing too.

Jewel the heroine has such a wry way of looking at the world that we can identify with her easily, yet she is full of love and does her best to cope like everyone else with some horrendous circumstances. Hers is compelling first-person narrative and the talented author gives her a very strong voice, part comedian part earth goddess, all woman.

Every character is a little jewel that sparkles, and the hunky heartthrob Malachi is even to melt your bones. The love secnes are wonderful--only wish there had been more!!

A beautifully written book-I couldn't put it down, raced to the end and then re-read the whole thing to really savor it. I will definitely be reading more by this fabulous author.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Samuels' Breakout Novel Into Genre Blended Fiction, February 4, 2002

By 

carol irvin "carol irvin" (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Place Like Home (Hardcover)

Barbara Samuels is probably known solely to romance readers under both that name and her pen name of Ruth Wind. She's had a loyal following for years led by Ellen Michelletti over at All About Romance. Ellen has kept after me for years about this author's ability as a writer and, although I thought Samuels was very good, I never thought she had the star potential Ellen did. Well, I was wrong and Ellen was right and this novel is the proof. (Ellen also proved me wrong on author Carla Kelly so I think I may be done arguing with Ellen over writers.) I think what Samuels does here that catapaults her into worthy consideration for all fiction readers is her adoption of a first person narrative voice. Prior to this, she always used third person. First person lets Samuels impart a heck of an emotional wallop with her work. Her character is Jewel Sabatino, from a Sicilian family in Pueblo, Colorado, who has been estranged from her father for two decades because of her running away with a musician while she was a senior in high school. She returns to Pueblo with her best friend Michael, who is dying of AIDS, her 17 year old son, Sean, by the musician (who died of a drug overdose as predicted by her father) and is joined by Michael's brother, Malachi, who becomes her love interest. The strong lead character throughout is Jewel and the conflicts, thoughts and tensions in her life are rendered perfectly. She also deals with her reflections over her mistakes from the past and the hand she has left to play in life on the other side of forty. That her body is no longer what it was and that she has to jump start a career are real world concerns well handled. The thoughts Jewel has throughout are so universal to contemporary women that you will think Samuels is transcribing your own thoughts. A source of considerable conflict throughout for several key characters including Jewel is what to do about internalized conflicts with parents, how to resolve them and get on with one's life so that one doesn't keep just replaying that early melodrama as one's entire life. Talk about a rich field to mine in writing! I think Samuels has hit upon a huge vein there that resonates with the reading public. Patricia Gaffney is another author who moved into fiction from romance. Gaffney wrote/writes superbly in both. I think Samuels is in a class with Gaffney. I think both of them are a million times better than Barbara Delinksy or Sandra Brown, who broke out of the romance genre years earlier and are now huge bestselling fiction authors. I also prefer Samuels and Gaffney to Nora Roberts, who remains in the romance genre as an enormous bestselling author. One final note: being from an Italian Catholic heritage myself I give Samuels credit for faithfully capturing that American subculture, both the feminine and masculine parts of it. I assume it must be her own heritage for her to have caught it this perfectly.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Place Like Home, March 15, 2004

By 

jla815 (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Place Like Home (Paperback)

This is my first book by Barbara Samuels, but I do plan on reading more of her work. The book tells a heart warming tale about love, loss and family that touched my emotions on more than one level. The charactars were brought to life on the pages and the town of Pueblo, with all its traditions, a place you would want to plan to visit and stay awhile. I would highly recommend it!