I’m thrilled to feature Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler on Story Matters today. Not only is this the She Reads book-of-the-month pick, but it’s my favorite She Reads selection to date. It’s just so good.

Debut novelist Julie Kibler began writing Calling Me Home after learning a bit of family history: as a teen, her grandmother fell in love with a young black man, but their families drove them apart. She also discovered that her father’s hometown had signs at the city limits banishing blacks by sundown. These two facts took root in her imagination, and a compelling work of fiction blossomed.

In addition to writing novels, Kibler is a freelance editor, wife to an engineer, mom to teens, and rescuer of dogs. She is currently working on her next novel and blogs regularly at What Women Write. You can visit her online at juliekibler.com.

From the back cover: Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It’s a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.

Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle’s guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives. Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.

Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper–in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle’s first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.

Of all the She Reads picks I’ve read to date, Calling Me Home earns my most enthusiastic review. It’s a debut novel marvelously paced, sensitively drawn, masterfully executed. The double narratives are crafted with equal care and attention to detail. The prose flows effortlessly, un-selfconsciously, drawing readers to the hope-filled center of a heartrending story.

To quote Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home, “If Calling Me Home were a young woman, her grandmother would be To Kill a Mockingbird, her sister would be The Help, and her cousin would be The Notebook.” Yes. And yet despite its resonance with these other giants, Calling Me Home holds its own in the literary world. It is a story that woulda-coulda-shoulda been terribly sad, yet Kibler manages to imbue it with grace and hope. I read its sweet last lines with tear-blurred vision.

Highly recommended.

5/5 stars–heartrending yet hope-filled

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and She Reads for providing me a copy of this book to review. All opinions expressed are my own.