In her latest novel, Going Home, author, Evelyn Palfrey introduces Talia Allen, who after thirty years on the job, is now retired and enjoying a busy life as she raises her fifteen year old granddaughter, Mishay. Enter Joe Lambert, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, who Talia meets while volunteering at the city’s evacuee shelter. After hiring Joe to do some handyman jobs around the house, on an impulse, she invites him and his troubled teenage nephew, Kyobe, to move into a spare room in her home until they can get back to New Orleans.
Everyone she knows, including Talia, thinks that she is crazy to open her home to a complete stranger, but Christian charity has propelled her decision and it proves to be the right one. Joe turns out to be a hardworking, honorable man, and the unconventional alliance between these two people becomes a positive force not only in Talia and Joe’s lives, but in those of the two impressionable teenagers under their care.
Going Home is a love story about the relationship that evolves between four people who need each other. As I read the story I noticed that the ages of the two main characters weren’t mentioned and their physical descriptions were minimal. In this narrative, neither of these societal parameters was as important as the kind of people that they were. I found myself becoming entwined in the lives of Thalia, Joe, Mishay and Kyobe. I rooted for them. I cared about them. Reading Palfrey’s work was like visiting old friends.
There is a reason why Palfrey was named as the 2012 Emma Award Author of the Year at this year’s Romance Slam Jam. Evelyn Palfrey is a master at her craft. She knows how to write a story and she does it well. Palfrey’s Going Home is a treasure, a real love story that is satisfying to the very end.
I GIVE IT A THUMBS UP!
I GIVE IT A THUMBS UP!
Review by C.V. Rhodes
