In Journeys Home, Dick Monteith has created an authentic and heartfelt story of three South Carolina boys who grew up together in a small town in the Low country. It follows the trajectory of each as they go off to different colleges, pursue different passions, and end up having very different lives. One becomes a wealthy realtor, another a progressive politician and a third eventually becomes a liberal Presbyterian minister. The novel is in part about how the boy's lives were shaped by Vietnam, the civil rights struggle, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and more. Yet this isn't a history book. It's a story that we can't help getting caught up in. It's a novel full of embodied, well-delineated characters who not only are a product of the times, but who go about the business of being themselves, making good choices and bad. As I read this novel, I found myself caring more and more about these boys and what happened to them and their families. Time and time again my heart went out to them. In the end, what more can we ask of a writer? Tommy Hays Creative Writing Professor, UNC-Asheville and author of The Pleasure Was Mine and In the Family Way
