Staff Reviews
Current reviews by Oldham County Public Library Staff
Sing Them Home
(Available? Check here!)
Stephanie Kallos
c. 2009, 524 p
Reviewed by Kay
Long after closing the book Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos, I continue to reflect on the immensity of the author's craft, her gift in the use of poetic language, her better-than-life characterizations, and the imaginative circumstances she creates for her characters.
"The year Hope went up" is 1978 and refers to a memorable and horrifying event in the lives of the citizens of Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, when a killer tornado rips through their little Welsh town and carries away with it Hope Jones, Doc Jones's community-minded, talented, irreplaceable wife.
At the time of her deadly adventure, Hope is a young mother of three children and is a wheelchair-bound victim of the killer Multiple Sclerosis. Her intense, and often conflicted, feelings regarding her husband, children, best friend (Alvina Closs, her husband's office nurse), and the undeniability of her impending death from such a debilitating disease are all revealed to the reader through her diary entries. While the essence of the Jones family saga is told in the present tense, and in our own day, vignettes of earlier events are shared in Hope's own words.
Sing Them Home reveals how each of the adult Jones children struggles in his or her own way to come to terms with the unimaginable and unexpected loss of the family's mother so many years before. Although they frequently stumble. each eventually manages to achieve the life he truly yearned for but so often seemed incapable of creating. The attainment of their successful lives, the reader senses, is due in no small way to Hope's own persistence beyond her earthly life in continuing to look after those she most cherished. There is a definite element of mysticism to this book which also adds to its charm.
This book offers a great story which is told with enormous insight, beautifully crafted figurative language, good humor, and intense pathos. However, despite my great recommendation, I might suggest the book's cover include a warning label, worded something like this: Begin reading at your own risk, as no other endeavor will take on the importance of reading this book non-stop, straight through to the end.