No Direction Home

by Marisa Silver

Book Overview

"Blindness will be like this." So says ten-year-old Will Burton, trying to reimagine his life in the wake of his father's abrupt disappearance, as his family picks up stakes and moves to California. Another boy, Rogelio Augilar, risks his life to cross the border illegally from Mexico to reach his father, enduring gangs, police roundups, and the pitiless desert. And Marlene McClure, a hard-edged, feisty teenager, leaves her own Midwestern home in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393328740
• ISBN13: 9780393328745
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Amazing writing, fantastic characters, wonderful story

I borrowed this from the library, but within a few chapters I went out and bought it! I simply had to own a copy to share with friends and family...yes, it's that good. The writing is spectacular.

"The universe moves, we are not fixed in one place"

Abandonment, in all its forms is the theme, which ties the threads of this gorgeously evocative novel together. The characters in No Direction Home are always on the move, never sure where they're going to end up, but forever certain that they have to leave. Converging on a house in North Hollywood, this mismatched collection of individuals discovers a gradual unfurling of hidden promises, of lives fraught with conflict and desire. New friendships are forged, old animosities are conquered, and a fragmented family finally comes together, the disparate elements becoming an integrated whole. When her astronomer husband suddenly abandons her, Caroline Burton is left to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Her twin 10-year-old sons Will and Ethan are left fatherless, wondering why the man they so desperately loved and admired vanished so inexplicably. In a fit of desperation Caroline packs up the car, leaves their Missouri home, and heads to Los Angeles to stay with Vincent, her distant father, and Eleanor, her ailing mother. For Eleanor is wracked with dementia, her mind moving in and out of lucidity, and Vincent, who is now caring for a woman who "is disappearing as fast as sand through fingers," is finding it all too much to handle. Help arrives in the form of Amador, a Mexican illegal immigrant, who needs a job so desperately. Amador, having left his wife and children back in Mexico, is eager to make a fresh start in the country to the North, a country that for him is filled with opportunity. Rogelio, Amador's teenage son, eventually follows in an effort to find his father, making the illegal and often dangerous journey from a life in Mexico that has little or no meaning. Marlene is a teenage girl living in the Midwest. The daughter of Caroline's absent husband by an earlier woman, Marlene is haunted by the memory of father whom she never really knew. Feeling an urgent need to at last connect with him, she travels to Los Angeles thinking that she has finally tracked him down. All the characters have arrived at a place and a time when pain and confusion have softened into a stew of bearable sadness. But there is also a longing and the hope of vague fulfillment: Only now with the onrush of dementia is Vincent actually getting to know his wife better. It's a lifetime that is cleaving open and he is finally being allowed to glimpse inside the seams and chasms of her past. Marline can't imagine leaving her whole life up to chance, especially in a place where nothing happens that hasn't happened a thousand times before. All her life she's been looking behind her waiting for the rest of her to catch up. She has no idea what she'll find when she gets to Los Angeles, but she's willing to take the risk. Amador is content to remain "a tiny parasite on the back of a cow," resolving to lose himself in a city that does not sleep. Sometimes he feels the world is so big that he is lost inside it, and he's constantly ambushed by memories of Rube

A superb novel

This is a beautifully written, deeply engaging and, in its quiet way, highly suspenseful book. The author does everything well here. She's able to animate an astounding range of characters without ever losing the thread of feeling holding the narrative together. Highly recommended.

Life on the edge of chaos

Abandonment leaves a scar that is all but invisible, but lies, corrosive, next to the heart that bears such a burden. No Direction Home tells the stories of abandonment in its many forms, the men who run from their families, the wives and children left to cope with unexpected grief and the long road to forgiveness, a treachery-laden path, at best. Ten-year old twins, Will and Nathan, are born with impaired vision, a disappointment to their astronomer father, who seeks solace in the beauty and mystery of the universe. When Frank abandons Caroline and the boys, Will takes the blame unto himself, certain his father would have stayed if he had been the right kind of son. Caroline left California, reinventing herself in Missouri, wife to Frank and twin sons, only to find herself abandoned once more, her father's leaving still fresh in her grownup mind. Caroline's father, Victor, returns home eventually, his acting career on the descent, life with Eleanor a quiet oasis after bachelor apartments and casual acquaintances. What neither anticipated is Eleanor's swift decline into dementia. Now Victor cares for his ailing wife, a woman's whose mind is no longer accessible to her daughter, Caroline. Grown weary from the burden of caretaker, Vincent hires Amador, an illegal immigrant with family problems of his own, wife and children left behind in Mexico. Victor admires Amador's quietude: "to be present and not present at the same time is a quality that recommends a person to such unrequited duty". In truth, Amador cannot speak Victor's language. Caroline returns, her sons in tow, to Eleanor's small house in Los Angeles, trekking across country, hoping for a fresh start once they reach their destination. Victor is uncomfortable with his daughter, without a sense of her adult self. To Vincent, "Caroline is like a room full of funhouse mirrors. He doesn't want to act trapped and end up staring at his elongated or horrifically fattened self". Meanwhile, two teenagers, one from Mexico and the other from the Midwest, set out on their own, making their way to the same destination. Rogelio is Amador's fourteen-year old son and Marlene is Frank's daughter from an earlier relationship, each determined to locate an errant father. Theirs is the world of the streets, the inherent dangers of moving unprotected through a treacherous underground. The author creates a variety of characters, each voice blended into a chorus of hopes, needs and unanswered questions. None have expectations, but all are driven to the source, their fathers, men as befuddled as their wives and children, but who retain the power to change lives. Silver's prose is insightful, deeply empathetic and nonjudgmental, focused on individual struggles for connection and the all-too-human face of suffering, a language charged with grace. Trenchant observations render this novel a pleasure to read, the intimate details exposing the characters' vulnerabilities. There are lessons here, clues to navigating