Name: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
ISBN: 9780007355037

Jenny Wingfield

A bewitching debut novel in the vein of the much-loved classic Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

a novel

The homecoming of Samuel Lake

Barbara Williford

This was a book read for a book club and at the time I did not do my due diligence and research the genre. This is classified by some as southern gothic which is reflected later in the book by the cruel and dark content towards animals and children. The book started as a great read and as someone who is from the south I was enjoying it and could actually visualize the characters as they came to life. It is well rewritten, and a book that I had a hard time putting down but it does have some disturbing content towards the end (after you have been sucked into the story). And although this is reality and does occur, it’s not something I enjoy during my time of escape. As an author with a background in film, I can see that this was written for that purpose in the future.

Andrea Badgley

Set in 1950s southern Arkansas, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is reminiscent of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: it is a story of both vileness and tender beauty, told from the perspective a a spunky eleven-year-old girl.

Swan Lake is the daughter of Methodist preacher Samuel Lake, and though the novel shows us the lives of the adults, and bedrooms, and other people’s homes, it is Swan who is the heroine of this story. Normally Swan and her brothers move every year when their father is transferred to a new parsonage, but this year he has been let go all together. He has no church, and the Lakes move from Louisiana back to Arkansas, to the childhood farm home of Willadee, Samuel’s wife and the children’s mother.

The summer is filled with the antics of children, as summers should be, but it is also filled with tensions: seduction, suicide, Samuel’s feeling he has been abandoned by God, and most stomach-turning, the entry of Ras Ballenger, a cruel child-beater of a man. The characters are entertaining, the plot is well-paced, and the narrative, while sometimes making me hold my breath, gave me a sense of hope. Wingfield does a wonderful job with the landscape of southern Arkansas, and she made me nostalgic for my grandparent’s farm in middle Georgia; I felt at home on the banks of the creek, in the woods, on the land as if I were eleven again, ranging Grandaddy and Nannie’s hills:

He stood out in the yard, sucking in air tat smelled of damp earth and autumn, and he wondered why people even had houses.

I think sitting in the backyard watching the kids catch lightning bugs is a pretty good way of worshipping God every once in a while.

For a large portion of the book I wondered if The Homecoming of Samuel Lake would be considered Christian fiction – it is unflinching and unapologetic in placing God and Christ, church and faith at the center of Samuel Lake’s life – but by the end of the book I wasn’t sure if that was enough to classify it as Christian lit. There are miracles and Samuel Lake’s faith, but there are many “good” characters who don’t give a whit about religion, who don’t share Samuel’s fervor, and who are treated just as well by the author without depending on Christ to get them through. Because I have never read Christian fiction, I was curious about the author’s intention, and when asked in an interview about her reaction to some reviewers labeling it as such, she answered, “To Samuel, God is as real as his wife and children are, and nothing is more important…None of the other characters care one way or the other about religion…This is not a religious story. It’s a story with one main character who is deeply religious.”

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake was a compelling read that kept me turning pages.

For more thoughts on The Homecoming of Samuel Lake, please see Poor preacher's child on Andrea Reads America.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

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