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THE HOMEPLACE
by Kevin Wolf
Minotaur, September 2016
259 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 1250103169


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The Colorado prairie, so close to the eastern border of the state, is the setting of Kevin Wolf's debut novel. Wolf's Brandon, Colorado, is a tiny town (though not as deserted as the ghost town that actually exists in Brandon). There's a small café, a school, a bison farm, and not too much else. But this is the town where Chase Ford, Brandon's one claim to fame, was born and where he learned to play basketball. Ford escaped Brandon as soon as he could, married a country singer, made a lot of money playing ball, and found it nearly impossible to extricate himself from the hold of the drugs he took when he was hurt. He arrives back in Brandon, his homeplace, at the same time that several murders take place – murders that seem somehow connected to the returning town hero.

While Ford attempts to find the half-sister he never met, he must deal with the animosity of his high-school rival on and off the court, now Sheriff Lincoln Kendall. He and the Sheriff are both pursued by the café owner, who once was the girl Ford stole from Kendall. It seems that Chase Ford is the only one who got away from the town, and his old friends all remain to remind him of the challenges of his life there as well as his responsibilities to those he left behind. In addition to the Sheriff and his ex-girlfriend, Ford has connections to a game warden, a plain speaking policeman, an anti-government loner, and just about everyone he comes into contact with in today's Brandon.

Wolf brings each character, no matter how incidental, to life. The reader feels almost as if (s)he has grown up with the characters. There is depth to each, and each plays a unique role in the tragedy that Ford faces. Ford himself is portrayed as a deeply flawed but deeply good person. As the book draws to a close, a sense of redemption permeates the world created by the Wolf's words. But between the opening page and the closing one, there is an intense plot that keeps the reader reading on. It's hard to set this book down.

Chase Ford's homeplace is so well portrayed that the reader has the sense of having visited a place different from his or her home, but clearly the home Chase has been missing. The reader may have never been to a remote prairie town, seen a bison, met a hermit, been caught in a wildfire…but after reading THE HOMEPLACE, that same reader will feel as if all off those experiences are a part of his or her own history. This is an amazingly well realized depiction of a small Western town, and the book deserves the Tony Hillerman Prize that it recently won.

§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.

Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, September 2016

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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