Finding Home.

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Eric Wright emigrated from England decades ago and worked in places such as Churchill, Manitoba, before he began earning a living with words as an English teacher and novelist. The protagonist of Finding Home emigrated from England decades ago, and worked in places such as Churchill, Manitoba, before he began earning a living with words as an advertising copywriter who wants to be a novelist. At fifty-four, Will Prentice suddenly finds himself accountable to no one. His children are adults, his agency can spare him, and his wife leaves him on their silver anniversary. So when he returns to Britain for his mother’s funeral, he decides to stay for a closer look at “post-Thatcher England”. With the aid and companionship of a young nephew, he explores his homeland with a view to perhaps returning to stay. But is it his homeland still? Is he English or Canadian?

There is a plot of sorts that surfaces from time to time as Will seeks to find out more about his late mother, but most of the book consists of Will’s witty, sometimes cynical, impressions of the England he finds and the mini-lectures he gives his nephew about Canada, with opinionated views on all manner of Canadian people, places, and traits, from the Saint John River to Flin Flon, from the CBC to the old Eaton’s catalogue. (“A great source of rural humour.”) Many readers will doubtless smile in agreement at some of his acerbic judgements, both about the country where he lives and the one where he was born

Even quite late in the novel, Prentice still says, “I don’t know what I am,” but in the end he discovers the truth about his parentage and makes a choice that will surprise no one.