The Winding Way Home

by Wesley J Wildman

Overview

The Winding Way Home is a moving meditation on a hard-won hope that persists in the face of traumatic crisis. When disaster strikes Jesse and Alexandra's family, their lives shatter. Jesse's grief triggers a full-blown psychiatric crisis, which spurs a most unusual spiritual quest in an attempt to find a way to feel at home in what suddenly seems like a cruel world. In the midst of her own trauma, Alexandra is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, further pitching the family into desperation. Jesse's weekly breakfast with two of his children, along with Alexandra's determined efforts to fight the erasure of her memories, holds the family together despite the agonizing uncertainty surrounding all of them. Jesse and Alexandra find themselves drawn into the horrifying world of missing and abducted children and the minds of their captors, and eventually adopt an abduction survivor named Maddy and her young children. Together, they forge a new and expanded family, and create a home where everyone can heal. This is a family saga, a love story, an account of child abduction and its exacting aftermath, a tale of hard-won hope, and a profound exploration of the spiritual potential of ordinary life in the face of the unthinkable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781736075043
Publisher:	Wildhouse Fiction
Publication date:	09/15/2023
Pages:	422
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.05(d)

About the Author

Wesley J. Wildman was raised in a quiet corner of Australia, fell in love with universities, and became a professor in the United States. A veteran author of academic and trade non-fiction, The Winding Way Home is his first novel. He lives with his wife in Boston, where they raised their two children. For more, visit WesleyWildman.com.

Editorial Reviews

In this hauntingly beautiful novel, Wildman demonstrates that even the most heinous tragedy can be transformed through the alchemy of agape love. The Winding Way Home wilds mysticism and metaphysics to explore the intricacies of the mind, overcoming unspeakable trauma, relatable family struggles, the bondage and freedom of death, and the resilience of the human spirit. It is an enthralling journey.

- Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling

Wildman creates an engrossing multigenerational narrative of present-day America that resonates with East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude. He also brings to us the mind and heart of Jesse, a quintessential religious naturalist, who creates a fascinating version of reality.

- Ursula Goodenough, Professor of Biology Emerita, Washington University in St. Louis

The Winding Way Home is traumatic, transcendent, and exhilarating. Through a cornucopia of characters, arresting themes, and captivating plotlines, Wildman explores the duality of joy and sorrow and the meaning of life.

- William David Hart, Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Religious Studies, Macalester College

The Winding Way Home is a multilayered, page-turner of a novel about a family living, loving, and learning to be human in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy. The novel shows us how one man strives to live meaningfully in the world as it is, rather than as he would like it to be, and in so doing, how he learns to revere its staggering beauty and goodness along with its pain, loss, and violence.

- Michael S. Hogue, Author of American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World

Disturbing, inspiring, daring, heartwarming, this is a novel of family, of terrible events, of deep and patient love, and of ultimate experiences and mysteries. The prose is engaging, the storytelling deft and resourceful, the vision of life opening into a larger vision of Being itself.

- Brian Jorgensen, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Boston University

The Winding Way Home is a story about constructing meaning after unspeakable evil renders reality absurd, about the power of love to transfigure traumas that are beyond the reach of healing, and, ultimately, about the immense beauty, unspeakable wonder, and infinite spiritual vitality of everyday life.

- David Rohr, Center for Mind and Culture, Boston

TS Eliot wrote that 'humankind cannot bear very much reality'. This sophisticated and searching novel is about just that - bearing reality, in the face of almost unimaginable trauma. Skillfully chronicled, it also breaks innovative ground in understanding the human imagination. Warmly recommended.

- Christopher Southgate, Professor, Exeter University

The Winding Way Home is an astounding and achingly beautiful story about what love can do-the enduring love of an ordinary family searching for healing in the face of unspeakable tragedy, the fierce love of an extraordinary mother protecting her children from monstrous evil, and the mystical love of a less-than-ordinary sannyasi learning to see, accept, and even worship the world as it is most truly, intensely, profoundly. The novel is a slice of life that opens out onto reality as a whole, reality in all its wonder and possibility, complexity and depth, wildness and ambiguity, grace and horror.

- Demian Wheeler, Associate Professor, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

From the Publisher