Homesick (review)

The tiny Missouri town of Dennis Acres may not be significant or glamorous, but it's always been Benny's beloved home. Now that his mother has left his hoarder father and fled town, though, twelve-year-old Benny is finding his own house a source of strife, as his father's all-consuming obsession is tough for Benny to deal with on his own. The townsfolk do their best to help, and they hatch a plan to lure Benny's dad out of the house long enough to clean it out—a task that suddenly seems easy by comparison when a tornado lays waste to the town. As she did in Grounded (BCCB 1/11), Klise concocts a small Missouri town of warm, weird cohesion and sets it in the recent past (1983, in this case). It's clear just how much Benny needs the townsfolk as his father spirals further into his world of found objects that are, he's sure, amazingly valuable; Benny's frustration and helplessness at this mistaken priority are credibly, palpably conveyed. The small-town characteristic of knowing everybody's business is believably both curse (his father's junk is used as an example of a town embarrassment in class) and boon (since everybody already knows, he doesn't suffer the fear of being found out). The post-tornado resolution is completely implausible, though, between the town's being freely given a house for every resident, Benny's dad's swift curing, and Benny's mother's return to town; the book also overplays Benny's father's foretelling of the computer revolution, in predictions that are, with exaggerated irony, considered ridiculous by everyone else. It's Benny's quandary that really makes the book come alive, though, and readers will heave a sigh of relief when his life finally changes for the better.