I recently finished Falling Home by Karen Smith. The book is about a women named Cassie Madison who returns to her hometown in Georgia after fifteen years to rush to her ailing father's needs. It is very surreal for her to come home and seeing everything as it was before she left. From the people she went to high school with to the inside of her childhood home. She arrives with the mindset that her visit will be a mere several days.
Cassie was so desperate to escape her small hometown of Walton Georgia, due to her sister marrying her ex-boyfriend. She needed to be free of the pain so she packed her bag and headed to New York. She became a very successful businesswoman and was engaged to a successful businessman. When she comes home, she realizes that her life in New York isn't who she really is. She was just trying so hard to prove that she could forget. But who was she trying to prove wrong? Herself. This is the question that eats her up throughout the book. Everyone in Walton wonders why she ever left in the first place. When she arrives, she looks down upon the sloppy Southern ways of Walton. As time goes on, she finds the special place in her heart she calls home and embraces Walton and it's importance and meaning to her. What made her do this? How did she suddenly change her mind in one short visit?
The word of home has a very different meaning for everyone. To some, it is a place of comfort and remembrance. For others, it is a place that is worth escaping from, and never to return. But no matter what feelings, positive or negative, there is a degree of familiarity. There are memories there good or bad that will always be in your mind.
