Sing Them Home

Sing Them Home is a big book with 540 pages. It’s a big story too, with travels that span the world, relationships that span societal mores, and families that span life and death. But it’s centered in the tiny town of Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, and in the family of Hope Jones, who disappeared in a tornado long ago and never returned. It’s a story, filled with time-spanning sense of place, about Hope’s children who have each, in their own way, lost their place in the world. It’s about the wind that tears things apart, and the way things come back together, not the same, but still as real and just as complete. And it’s about the littlest sister, the one who maybe wasn’t quite complete from the start, who somehow seems to give show more completeness to everyone else.

The death of Hope’s husband many years later brings the family back. They return to the town’s deep Welsh traditions where the dead are “sung home,” to the town’s sweet expectations, even those that can’t be expressed, and to each other. The wonderful stepmother deals with heartbreak and disillusion on her way to forgiveness. The self-centered brother learns to center himself on something other than image. The stubbornly separate sister finds acceptance. The lonely find love.

The pages run the gamut of emotions, from Hope’s diary of hope’s retreat, to lost children, to Viney’s very real bereavement, to the kindness and cruelties of strangers. All of it is so very real and absorbing that the book becomes hard to put down. Wrenched heartstrings remain somehow always sure that the tune will play sweetly again, as indeed, it does. The writing sings. And the characters finally, each on their own surprising path, all find their way home. show less

Sing Them Home is a beautiful, generous story about family, community, love and grief. In 1978 a tornado sweeps through the town of Emlyn Springs, Nebraska taking Hope Jones with it. She is never found and this is the story of how her three children live with the grief of her mysterious disappearance. But this book is so much more then the basic plot. Stephanie Kallos has a magical way of weaving characters and setting with weather and atmosphere until it is a real jolt to wrench yourself from the pages and find you aren't actually in Emlyn Springs. Her characters become real people who you will worry over and laugh with even after you put the book down!
This is one of the best books I read in 2008 and will make a great Christmas gift.

Sing Them Home tells the story of the Jones family. Siblings Larken, Gaelen and Bonnie lost their mother to a tornado when they were young. The novel begins when the children are grown, and their father has just died. It chronicles their lives, and the life of the small town populatd largely by Welsh immigrants they come from, Emlyn Springs.

There were parts of the plot that weren't credible, such as Bonnie finding 25-year-old scraps of paper from her mother's diary, and the magical realism of ghosts watching over events. On the other hand, the characters were well developed and I was pulled deep into their lives. A great read.

I enjoyed this book, largely because the setting is Nebraska, a state I called home for many years.
If you've ever driven through Nebraska (it seems that people who say they've been to Nebraska usually mean that they've driven through it - in one side and out the other, driving the interstate on the way to somewhere else), you may remember the middle part, where land is flat and roads are laid out on a mile grid and dotted with farms. That was my home. For fun, we drove to the area where this book is set – as the author says, “southeastern Nebraska is hillier than many people realize” - for weekends of camping with beautiful scenery. Stephanie Kallos described it perfectly.

Nebraska holds pockets of ethnic groups in scattered show more communities; Czech, German and Swedish towns all were near our neck of the woods. I enjoyed the author's descriptions of Welsh culture, and their singing traditions.

She also got it right describing the University of Nebraska; I have a son who will soon graduate from there, so I've been on campus numerous times. Even her description about “ the granddaddy of all university programs, the one that inhabits the symbolic epicenter of severe storm reporting: the University of Oklahoma” brought smiles of remembrance of our visit to the meteorology center at OU during the time before another son graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

Just listen to me rambling on and on … unemployed for a very long stretch and now uprooted, I guess my heart-strings set to twangin' with this read. Moving on … with apologies ...

So the setting was evocatively descriptive. The characters, too - very real in their personal dimensions and their relationships, especially the grown siblings. I enjoyed the device of the mother's diary, filling in the back-story but lost to the tornado and never read by her family.

I'm not a believer in ghosts, but still smiled my way through the author's 'dead mothers' and 'dead fathers' and their thoughts about the goings-on happening around them.

Sing Them Home is a very emotional book. The pain of watching your own body degenerate with M.S., while wanting your children to remember you whole. Love lost, while substitutes try to fill the hole – food, working out, collecting, searching. Small town life – mediocrity and solace.

And all of it so very well written. show less

This is not a book I would typically pick up on my own. I don't particularly care for family sagas, I have enough drama in my own family, thank you very much. That being said, although it took me a while to get into it, I didn't mind this one too much (I know, I know, not a ringing endorsement, but this isn't my genre).

The book starts with a discussion of the dead mothers and fathers of the world roaming the earth which I found odd and a little unnecessary. (More is not always better, sometimes it's just more.) The novel could have stood on it's own without this, in my opinion, and I felt that it detracted more than it enhanced.

Then Kallos allows us into the lives of each of the siblings, who are far from likable. Granted, the tragedy show more of their childhood shaped their lives, but their self absorption makes it hard to feel empathy for any of them. If it weren't for flashbacks courtesy of the pages of Hope's diary, I don't think I could have warmed up to any of them. However, seeing them through Hope's eyes, helps endear them to the reader slightly.

Still, I have issues with realism in the book. (Perhaps that's my trouble with contemporary fiction in general.) Bonnie riding around town finding legible bits of paper from diaries destroyed 26 years ago is too much of a stretch for me. And I find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't have tried to find her help... especially Gaelan's former high school sweetheart the psychiatrist. The ending seemed all too abrupt and thoroughly neat for me too; I like things sussed out a little better than that. show less

Hope Jones, married to a physician, battling a chronic disease, and living in rural Nebraska with three children, is one day tragically swept away by a tornado and never seen again. Many years later, when their father also dies somewhat tragically by a weather event, her grown children are still struggling to make sense of their lives.

This is a long novel that seemed to have a lot of potential. It's not every day you come across a book about someone being swept away by a tornado. The fact that Hope's disappearance/death was referred to numerous times in the story not by either of these terms, but instead as 'When Hope "went up"' seemed especially endearing. The story is told from varied points of view, not only from each of her show more children, but from Hope herself in the form of diary entries, a few times by a few extraneous characters, and even from the souls (?) of those in the community who had previously died. And the timelines switch back and forth between Hope's earlier married years, the years when her health began to decline, and the present day of her children. All three of Hope's children seem to be struggling in some way or another, but I didn't really feel as though this had anything to do directly with the fact that they'd lost their mother at a younger age. There were times when the story became bogged down with excessive detail, as though the author were trying too hard with descriptive content. Though there were some quirky character traits with some of the characters, I never really felt a true connection with any of Hope's children. The town of Emlyn Springs was almost a character in itself, and I think maybe I most enjoyed that aspect of the story. I don't think this was a bad book, but I often wondered where the story was going and exactly what the author wanted the reader to come away with. It seemed like it had the potential to be more than it was. show less

Where to start with this one? Would you read it because it was about a small town in the midwest? Would you read it because it was about a mother who was never found after being swept up in a tornado in 1978? Would you read it to find out what happened to her three young children after she disappeared? Or would you read to it to find out about the relationship between Hope, her husband and Hope's best friend, Viney. There are so many reasons to read this one, it's hard to choose just one.

Hope was a young woman full of big dreams for her small town. Unfortunately, those dreams were lost along with Hope in the tornado of 1978. In the aftermath, life for Hope's children is forever changed. Now as grown ups, the children are called home show more again to Emylyn Springs after the unexpected death of their father. There's Larkin, the college professor, who finds her comfort in food. Gaelen, the middle child, a TV weatherman, not a meteorologist. And Bonnie Jones, the youngest, who never left Emlyn Springs and combs its fields and ditches for pieces of the past that might help her put together her mother's story. In a town where funeral celebrations take ten days, Larkin, Gaelen, and Bonnie revisit the tragedy of their mother's death and each find themselves at a turning point.

This story is filled with believable characters, interesting plot twists and a town that is as much a character as any of the people. This excellent book, well worth the read, will leave you pondering much. show less