return to home  
Join   |  Gift   |  Member Login   |  Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile
Follow Us: 
    A Country Called Home by Kim Barnes

A Country Called Home: Book summary and reviews of A Country Called Home by Kim Barnes

A Country Called Home

A Country Called Home
by Kim Barnes
Published in USA Sep 2008,
288 pages.

Publication information


Critics' Opinion: 
Readers' Rating:  Not Yet Rated
About BookBrowse Rankings
Share: 
Buy This Book

A Country Called Home Summary

It is 1960 when Thomas Deracotte and his pregnant wife, Helen, abandon a guaranteed future in upper-crust Connecticut and take off for a utopian adventure in the Idaho wilderness. They buy a farm sight unseen and find the buildings collapsed, the fields in ruins. But they have a tent, a river full of fish, and fields overgrown with edible berries and dandelion greens: they can survive happily until the house is rebuilt. Thomas discovers he isn’t a natural farmer, but there’s a local boy, Manny—a sweet soul of eighteen without a family of his own—who agrees to manage the fields in exchange for room and board. Their optimism and desire carry them again and again.

Until: the traumatizing circumstances surrounding the birth of their daughter, Elise, test them in ways they could never have anticipated. And soon, in the aftermath of a tragic accident to which only Manny bears witness, suspicion, anger, and regret come to haunt the already shattered family. It is a legacy that Elise will inherit, will struggle with, and, against all odds, will ultimately overcome.

A Country Called Home Reviews

"Starred Review. Barnes's descriptions of the rugged landscape are vivid, and the characters' sadness and desires are revealed with wrenching detail." - Publishers Weekly.

"Starred Review. Covering 17 years, Barnes's spellbinding story details personal tragedy and failed Sixties idealism but ends with the hope of a new generation. Highly recommended." - Library Journal.

"[M]any readers will be exasperated by the too-neat parallels and overly literary insights. Resonant with themes of longing and loss, but too self-conscious for its own good." - Kirkus Reviews.

The information about A Country Called Home shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

A Country Called Home Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Kim Barnes Author Biography

Scott M. Barrie

Among other works, Kim Barnes is the author of Finding Caruso, A Country Called Home and two memoirs, In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country - a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize - and Hungry for the World. She is co-editor with Mary Clearman Blew of Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers, and with Claire Davis of Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE magazine, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on...

... Full Biography

Other books by Kim Barnes at BookBrowse

In the Kingdom of Men jacket

Finding Caruso jacket

Recently Published Novels

more...


Become a Member
Click Here
Editor's Choice
  •  May 18 
  •  May 16 
  •  May 15 
The Woman Upstairs
Claire Messud

The Woman Upstairs Jacket

The riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own.
How to Create the Perfect Wife
Wendy Moore

How to Create the Perfect Wife Jacket

Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Happier Endings
Erica Brown

Happier Endings Jacket

A wise and affirming meditation on living fully and preparing for death, written by a highly regarded spiritual teacher.
Click Here
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Jewish Young Adult Books That Are Not About The Holocaust
Books to Give This Mother's Day
A Short History of Chechnya
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
Recent Reader Reviews
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight... read more
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on... read more
The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Half the Sky
Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
2. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
William Kamkwamba
3. Because of Winn-Dixie
Kate DiCamillo
4. Eagle Strike
Anthony Horowitz
5. Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
More...
Book Club Recommendations
The Gods of Gotham
by Lyndsay Faye
Paperback (Mar/13)
Forgotten Country
by Catherine Chung
Paperback (Mar/13)
Philida
by André Brink
Paperback (Feb/13)
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
Hardback (Jun/12)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
The Sisterhood
by Helen Bryan
Four Stars            (Apr/13)
The Laws of Gravity
by Liz Rosenberg
4.5 Stars            (May/13)
A Dual Inheritance
by Joanna Hershon
Four Stars            (May/13)
More...
  Latest BookBrowse News
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing (May 16 2013)
In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
 
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Do you mainly read newly published or older books?
Mainly newer books
Mainly older books
A mix of new and old books
Search: Title or Author
Free Newsletters
Bring Up the Bodies

Online Book Club
More about
Five Days
Join the discussion!


Win This Book!
The Pigeon Pie Mystery


Enter To Win Now!

wordplay
Solve this clue:
"I I M B T Give T T R"

and be entered
to win....
frame top
New Author
Interviews
Menna van Praag
Erica Brown
Helga Weiss
Kate Morton
frame bottom
HOME Book Submissions | Advertising | Library Subscriptions | Reviewing for BookBrowse | Contact Us