Book Review: The Wrong Way Home
Apr. 13th, 2025 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerYesterday evening, I decided I might as well get started on my 2025 Newbery reading, and picked up Kate O’Shaughnessy’s The Wrong Way Home to read a couple of chapters before bed. Then I read the whole book in one sitting, and lay awake for the next three hours or so thinking about it.
This is particularly impressive because I felt lukewarm about the premise of the book. Our heroine Fern starts off in a back-to-nature cult in New York, only to be yoinked out by her mother who drives her across the country to California to start a new, mainstream life.
Now, I love cult stories, but to be honest I’m much more interested in the cult aspect than the “return to mainstream life” thing. I know what mainstream life is like. I want to read about a day in the life of the cult, I want cult rituals, I want a deep dive into cult beliefs. My favorite cult story is the movie Midsommar, which ends with Dani ecstatically joining the cult of flower-bedecked Swedish human sacrificers. I mean, yes, technically bad, but don’t we all practice a spot of human sacrifice from time to time – what is the death of the uninsured but a human sacrifice on the altar of Freedom and Capitalism! – and, more importantly, Dani feels held by them.
The Wrong Way Home grasps that in order for Fern (and the reader) to root for Fern to stay out here, she has to find a mainstream community that she also feels held by, without the cult drawbacks of “when you come of age you have to go on a coming of age ritual which might kill you.” Driftaway Beach is Fern’s mother’s tiny oceanfront California hometown, and although her mother’s parents died long ago, her godmother Babs is still there, running an extremely pink teashop called Birdie’s after her dead wife.
Then Fern starts school. She’s much more enthusiastic about this once she realizes the school has computers, which she can use to help her find the Ranch’s address so she can write to Dr. Ben to come save her. And her science teacher is pretty cool, and really concerned about the environment in a way that makes Fern realize that you can care about the environment and also NOT live in an isolated rural compound that you never ever leave, and she starts to make friends, and also Babs invites her to come to the teashop for treats anytime she wants, on the house, and she hasn’t had sugar in years and the petit fours completely blow her mind…
But she still really misses her friends back home at the Ranch, and the chickens and the forest and the feeling of building a community that will sustain life in a future wracked by climate change and societal collapse.
And she’s also having trouble finding the Ranch on the internet, not least because she hasn’t used the internet since she moved to the Ranch when she was six. So she hires a private investigator, using money that Babs is paying her to clear out a bunch of clutter left behind by her wife’s sudden death years ago.
But earning money takes time, and a private investigation also takes time, and time is what it takes to put down roots. And when you hire a private investigator, well, he might turn up more than you’ve bargained for…
Just an incredibly readable book. I really meant to put it down and go to sleep, but I kept having to read just another chapter or two, and then somehow the book was done.
This is particularly impressive because I felt lukewarm about the premise of the book. Our heroine Fern starts off in a back-to-nature cult in New York, only to be yoinked out by her mother who drives her across the country to California to start a new, mainstream life.
Now, I love cult stories, but to be honest I’m much more interested in the cult aspect than the “return to mainstream life” thing. I know what mainstream life is like. I want to read about a day in the life of the cult, I want cult rituals, I want a deep dive into cult beliefs. My favorite cult story is the movie Midsommar, which ends with Dani ecstatically joining the cult of flower-bedecked Swedish human sacrificers. I mean, yes, technically bad, but don’t we all practice a spot of human sacrifice from time to time – what is the death of the uninsured but a human sacrifice on the altar of Freedom and Capitalism! – and, more importantly, Dani feels held by them.
The Wrong Way Home grasps that in order for Fern (and the reader) to root for Fern to stay out here, she has to find a mainstream community that she also feels held by, without the cult drawbacks of “when you come of age you have to go on a coming of age ritual which might kill you.” Driftaway Beach is Fern’s mother’s tiny oceanfront California hometown, and although her mother’s parents died long ago, her godmother Babs is still there, running an extremely pink teashop called Birdie’s after her dead wife.
Then Fern starts school. She’s much more enthusiastic about this once she realizes the school has computers, which she can use to help her find the Ranch’s address so she can write to Dr. Ben to come save her. And her science teacher is pretty cool, and really concerned about the environment in a way that makes Fern realize that you can care about the environment and also NOT live in an isolated rural compound that you never ever leave, and she starts to make friends, and also Babs invites her to come to the teashop for treats anytime she wants, on the house, and she hasn’t had sugar in years and the petit fours completely blow her mind…
But she still really misses her friends back home at the Ranch, and the chickens and the forest and the feeling of building a community that will sustain life in a future wracked by climate change and societal collapse.
And she’s also having trouble finding the Ranch on the internet, not least because she hasn’t used the internet since she moved to the Ranch when she was six. So she hires a private investigator, using money that Babs is paying her to clear out a bunch of clutter left behind by her wife’s sudden death years ago.
But earning money takes time, and a private investigation also takes time, and time is what it takes to put down roots. And when you hire a private investigator, well, he might turn up more than you’ve bargained for…
Just an incredibly readable book. I really meant to put it down and go to sleep, but I kept having to read just another chapter or two, and then somehow the book was done.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-13 06:39 pm (UTC)All of which is to say, I'm going to put this book on my to-read list.
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Date: 2025-04-13 06:47 pm (UTC)I just wanna read stories about cults (and non-cult religious movements where life is very different from the surrounding society) that are about the experience of being a part of that society, rather than about escaping from it. Human sacrifice totally optional actually! Would love to do A Year in Midsommar in one of the non-sacrifice years.
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Date: 2025-04-13 06:55 pm (UTC)And they all consider the human sacrifice to be an uncomplicated happy ending!
I mean, horror to the reader but not to the character is a genre of horror! Just not as common as I would like, especially if we limit it to stuff where Our Perspective doesn't eventually impinge on the character's reality and make them feel bad.
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Date: 2025-04-13 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-04-14 10:17 pm (UTC)One of the first cult books I read was Maggie Brooks’ Heavenly Deception, about a woman trying to rescue her sister from the Moonies (it goes badly) and I found the description of the narrator’s loss of self terrifyingly believable- and yet, from her pov, it’s a happy ending.
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Date: 2025-04-15 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 02:59 pm (UTC)Time is the ingredient that's needed for so many spells. Good to see it coming into play! And I'm feeling tense thinking about Fern having put out a call for help, but meanwhile she's growing into her new community. Eeep!
(To be clear: her mom and she lived in the cult, right? But then her mom thought better of it and they moved?)
I think a teashop called "Extremely pink teashop" should be a thing.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 03:04 pm (UTC)Extremely Pink Teashop would have a madly devoted cult following. Perhaps I will be able to work it into a story someday... hmm...