First published 2014
A man comes back to the place he once called home, but the return brings no comfort. The city pulses with its own dark energy, alive with secrets and shadows that mirror his internal state. Family connections that should offer solace instead draw blood like shattered glass underfoot. Each familiar street and face reopens old wounds, forcing him to confront the ties that bind and cut simultaneously. The homecoming becomes a reckoning with sadness and yearning that have never truly healed. In this compressed narrative, Hobson captures the particular ache of returning to a place where love and pain intertwine so completely they become indistinguishable. The protagonist must navigate not just the physical landscape of his past, but the emotional terrain of relationships that shaped and scarred him.
Genres: american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: emotional-journey, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Deep Ellum
Period: Contemporary
120 pages · Paperback · Calamari Press