Antoinette is an elderly woman in an assisted living facility. She’s spent the last six years there since her husband died, and most of those years have been happy. She enjoys the company of others in her situation, and her son comes to visit often. But in recent months, she’s had a tougher and tougher time leaving her room. Her friends seem different to her and the world seems increasingly confusing. She spends an escalating amount of time in her head. There, her body and mind haven’t betrayed her. There, she’s a young newlywed with a husband who dotes on her and an entire life of dreams to live. There, she is truly home.
Warren, Antoinette’s son, is a man in his early forties going through the toughest year of his life. His marriage ended, he lost his job, and in the past few months, his mother has gone from hale to increasingly hazy. Having trouble finding work, he spends
more and more time by his mother’s bedside. But her lack of lucidity both frustrates and frightens him. With far too much time on his hands, he decides to try to recreate his memories of home by attempting to cook his mother’s greatest dishes using the rudimentary appliances available in her room. He finds the challenge surprisingly rewarding, especially because the only time he feels his mother is truly with him anymore is when she is eating the meals he prepares for her.
Joseph, Antoinette, and Warren are three people on different searches for home. How they find it, and how they connect with one another at this critical stage in each of their lives, is the heart of the story I tell in
The Journey Home
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
The Story Plant
The Aronica-Miller Publishing Project, LLC
P.O. Box 4331
Stamford, CT 06907
Copyright © 2010 by The Fiction Studio
eISBN : 978-0-984-19051-5
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except
as provided by U.S. Copyright Law. For information, address
The Story Plant.
First Story Plant Printing:
January 2010