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| Categories | Genre Fiction |
| Author | Kristin Hannah |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books (June 26, 2012) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 416 pages |
| Item Weight | 2.31 pounds |
| Dimensions |
5.2 x 0.93 x 7.92 inches |
I. Book introduction
Home Again is the story of two people who met while teenagers in a romance that was destined to break apart one way or another. Angel DeMarco was from the wrong side of the tracks when he ran into Madeline Hilyard. That didn’t stop them from having a romance that ended when she discovered she was pregnant. Despite all the promises in the dark, Angel took the money Maddy’s well-to-do father handed him, bought a motorcycle, and was never seen again. Well, not quite true. He was seen again, on the big screen when an impromptu acting career took off making him one of Hollywood’s notorious bad boys.
From the New York Times bestselling author The Four Winds, a moving, powerful novel about the fragile threads that bind together our lives and the astonishing potential of second chances
Madelaine Hillyard is a world-famous heart surgeon at the top of her game. Her personal life is far less successful. A loving but overworked single mom, she is constantly at odds with her teenage daughter. At sixteen, Lina is confused, angry, and fast becoming a stranger to her mother—a rebel desperate to find the father who walked away before she was born. Complicating matters for Madelaine are the vastly different DeMarco brothers: While priest Francis DeMarco is always ready to lend a helping hand, his brother, Angel, long ago took on the role of bad boy. Years earlier Angel abandoned Madelaine—and fatherhood—to go in search of fame and fortune. His departure left Madelaine devastated, but now he reappears and seeks help from the very people he betrayed—as a patient in dire need.
Editorial Reviews
- “A tender, beautifully told story of emotional growth, forgiveness [and] the possibility of miracles.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- “[A] memorable story of love and redemption.”—Library Journal
- “All the world loves Kristin Hannah.”—Newsday
- “Powerful, thought-provoking and emotionally complex.”—RT Book Reviews
About Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah (born September 25, 1960) is an American writer. Her most notable works include Winter Garden, The Nightingale, Firefly Lane, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds. In 2024, St. Martin’s Publishing Group published her novel, The Women, which is set in America in the 1960s.
Kristin Hannah was born in California. After graduating with a degree in communication from the University of Washington, Hannah worked at an advertising agency in Seattle. She graduated from the University of Puget Sound law school and practiced law in Seattle before becoming a full-time writer. Hannah wrote her first novel with her mother, who was dying of cancer at the time, but the book was never published.
Hannah’s best-selling work, The Nightingale, has sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide and has been published in 45 languages.
Hannah lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with her husband and their son.
II. Reviewer: Home Again by Kristin Hannah
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1. DANA ILIE reviews for Home Again
4.5 stars
Every time I pick up one of her books, I am reminded why I enjoy them. Fantastic characters and story line. Hannah’s characters are wonderful – not the usual “perfect” romance characters, but have their flaws, problems and troubles – just like real people!
Home Again was no different! My heart ached reading about the mother/daughter struggles and the struggles of the heart.
2. MIZ reviews for Home Again
This book was exactly what I needed to read. Little did I know when I started it that I would devour it in under 24 hours, and at times my face would be damp from tears that unwittingly fell onto the screen of my ebook.
By page 20 I knew what was going to happen, but the foreshadowing didn’t lessen the impact of what came next. The characters were so rich that I felt genuine warmth for them all and loved their character development. The one upset for me, and it’s very minor, is that I didn’t really like the character as Angel but I suspect we weren’t meant to – it was all about the extreme of emotions in the female characters and the different forms of love that exist in the world. It warmed my heart, warmed my soul.
Every Hannah book that I have read has turned out to be a delight. She’s rapidly becoming one of my ‘go to’ authors right up there with Picoult and Chamberlain. For much the same reason I guess, but yes, highly recommended. If you’re stuck in a reading hole, read one of these books. It will put you back on your road to recovery!
3. RON WROBLEWSKI reviews for Home Again
I know it was easy to figure out what was going to happen in this book. I had read extensively about personality changes after a major organ transplant and wanted to find out if this would take place in the book. It did somewhat – taste in music and food preference (milk). I believe that memory exists throughout the body and that when organs are taken out and put in another body the memory goes with them. It seems to be true in 40-50 percent of major organ transplants. This book has some of that.
Once again we see in her novels a woman who won’t speak out, keeps things to herself which leads to problems – a theme in many of her books.
4. ANITA reviews for Home Again
I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read by this author and although this one doesn’t have the complexity to the plot that her more recent books have, I still enjoyed the characters and the emotions that are always amazing. The story line: a long ago affair between a woman who is now a renowned heart surgeon and a man who has become a famous actor is revisited when he needs a heart transplant. To add to the awkwardness of the situation, she has remained good friends with his brother (a priest) and has a 16 year old child with the former lover that he walked away from. There are no real surprises with the story line, but the characters are amazing and I loved all the emotions. 4.25/5 stars.
5. MARCIA reviews for Home Again
Wonderfully sad story
I have never had words create such strong emotions as I feel reading her books. I.think this is an older book but it really grabs at the heart. She has an excellent talelent of.painting pictures with words and this talent only gets better and better.
I.think.I will need to choose a Michener novel.next to ratchet down the emotions this story brought forth.
6. MARLENE RICO reviews for Home Again
Kristin Hannah has done it again 🥹🥹
Home Again is a poignant tale of love, loss, and second chances. The story centers around Madeline, a brilliant young woman with a strict and controlling father who has her life planned out to the minutest detail. However, everything changes when Maddie girl falls in love with Angel, a boy her father deems unworthy.
When Madeline finds herself pregnant, her father insists on an abortion. Torn between her father’s expectations and her own desires, Maddie initially agrees but ultimately cannot go through with it. She decides to keep the baby, a decision that leads to her being disowned by her father. Determined to provide a good life for her child, Maddie works tirelessly and rises through the ranks to become one of Seattle’s top cardiologists.
Years later, Angel reappears in Madeline’s life, this time as a patient with severe heart issues. Unbeknownst to him, the cardiologist who will be treating him is the woman he once abandoned. As they navigate this unexpected reunion, both Madeline and Angel are forced to confront their past choices and the lingering feelings between them. The novel explores themes of regret, failure, abandonment, triumph, and ultimately, forgiveness.
A must read! ♥️📚
7. LK reviews for Home Again
This was not my first Kristin Hannah book and it won’t be my last. I love the stories she weaves and am always riveted from the first page to the last. I’m always a bit sad when I come to the end of her stories.
I love being rewarded with such rich emotions for the time I invest in reading her books.
Keep writing, Kristin!
8. BARBARA reviews for Home Again
I tend to finish books after I’ve gone to bed, and my mind is fuzzy, my body is totally relaxed, and I can’t think of a clever way to tell why I enjoyed the book I’ve just read. Let me just say that Kristin Hannah is one of my new favorite authors. The first book I read of hers is the latest one published, and my fuzzy brain can’t remember the name of it. Something about being alone in Alaska. It was a masterpiece. Home Again tells a completely different story about a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy who fell in love, but through a fearful, heartbreaking development separated from one another. Their lives changed completely, affecting the lives of two other people dear to them. The girl became a successful cardiologist who specialized in heart transplants, and was the single mother of a troubled daughter in her teens. The boy became a famous movie star with a wild boy reputation whose brother chose to serve the God he loved as a priest. The brother became a close friend of the doctor and her daughter, helping them through hard times. All their lives came together when wild movie star has a massive heart attack due to his party life of drugs and alcohol and sex. He has to go back home to Seattle for a heart transplant, and you can guess who his doctor is. Complicating everything is the fact unknown to both doctor’s daughter and movie star, they are father and daughter.
Hannah does a superb job of fleshing out the characters, using word and phrases that make the reader feel the anger, the disappointment, the longing, the regret, the fear, and the love all so deeply felt by each person in the story.
I guess I could have just given the book five stars and said, “It’s a really good book, I enjoyed reading it, and I think you’d like it too.” Then I could have gone to sleep faster. No, it’s worth more than empty, flippant words. I doo have to,say, though, that it’s a good book by a talented author, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope you do, too. Oops, there i said it again. I’d better quit before I start writing in my sleep.
9. GINA reviews for Home Again
Home Again – 5 / 5
Kristin Hannah does it again! Another wonderful story filled with hope & love. The story was wrapped in a very neat & tidy little package. Some might say, a little too good to be true but I was more than fine with that.
In true Kristin Hannah form, this is another “grab the Kleenex!” story. Her characters are so well developed (I adored Francis in this book) and you will most certainly feel their hurt, feel their loss, want to give them a hug and then cheer them on. I thought it would be fun to mention who I pictured as Angel DeMarco, the Hollywood big shot with a heart ready to give out sooner rather than later. For me, he was Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) and I definitely had a little crush on him throughout this book. 😉 The romance in Home Again was wonderfully written.
Thank you, Ms. Hannah, for another uplifting story filled with hope, forgiveness, selflessness and love.
10. BEV WALKLING reviews for Home Again
This book reminded me in some ways of a typical Jodi Piceault novel in that it exposes the reader to a situation that can be ethically challenging and explored the consequences of choices made. It was a novel of an incredible friendship and a long ago betrayal, a child suffering from the absence of a father and a life that was increasingly meaningless. I wept a lot while reading it. There was some predictability to how things eventually played out but I still enjoyed the book and appreciated the discussion on organ transplant – something which is timely given recent news stories about why someone might be turned down for one.
III. Home Again Quotes by Kristin Hannah
The best book quotes from Home Again by Kristin Hannah
“Home is part of us. It’s in the scars we have on our knees and elbows, in the memories that surface when we sleep. I don’t think you can ever really leave.”
“There are always times in life when you don’t fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That’s what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself—even when you’re most afraid.”
“Take it from me, Father. Life is over quickly, and you only regret what you didn’t do.”
“Just that. Love. A brother’s love, a father’s love, a family’s love. And love wasn’t like bodies—it didn’t go away, not ever. It stayed there inside of you, tangled in moments and memories.”
“Love meant always being a little afraid.”
“Sometimes you have to turn the world upside down to see it right side up.”
“But it had gotten so boring, all that crying and wanting and needing. This year she’d realized that she’d never be like her mom, and the realization had freed her. She stopped trying to get good grades and make good friends, and do everything well. She had flourished in her rebellion, reveled in it.”
“Please don’t humiliate me by killing yourself before we can save your life.”
“He’d always had a joke for Francis in the confessional, a ‘sin’ that could be counted on to cause a young priest to grin behind the safety of the wooden shield. Bless me, Father, for I put tuna in the chicken salad.”
“Love is a gift from God—what we do with it is up to us.”
“. . .perhaps that’s what life is, getting it wrong and going on, and still believing, always believing.”
“Don’t you dare say that to me, not this time. Nobody’s strong enough to be a parent. We just do it, blindly, going forward on faith and love and hope. That’s all it is, Angel. Being afraid, being afraid in the marrow of your bones, and going on.”
“being a doctor was a snap compared to being a single parent.”
“what it felt like to curl up in bed against the same body every night for thirty years, to wake to the same loving face. He wanted to ask if love was a safe harbor or a stormy sea.”
“There are always time in your life when you don’t fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That’s what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself-even when you’re most afraid.”
“His mouth fit hers perfectly, just as it had so many years ago. It started out soft and gentle, that first kiss after so many lost and lonely years. She clung to him, kissing him with everything in her, as if she could draw that essential spark of him into her very soul, as if she could have some piece of him to take away from this magical ride. The”
“Madelaine: I guess it’s up to you to carve the turkey.
Angel: Come on, bro, show me how to carve up this bird.
Francis: Start at the breast, Angel. God knows, you should know how to do that.”“Quit pouting, girl. All a Milquetoast ever gets is wet.”
“singing along with the radio. It was blasting a song by the Butthole Surfers.”
“Madelaine performed a few quick tests on him before easing out of the room to give the couple their privacy. In the hallway she stopped the head transplant nurse and quietly gave her an update, then grabbed her coat from her office and raced from the building.”
“I’ve been afraid since the moment they laid her in my arms. Every time she goes to school or to a friend’s house or out on a date, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what the world will do to my beautiful baby girl, afraid of what I will do to her. It never goes away, ever. You just live with it and love her and be there for her.”
“Welcome to parenting. It’s not a job, it’s an adventure.”
“I’m afraid of what the world will do to my beautiful baby girl, afraid of what I will do to her. It never goes away, ever. You just live with it and love her and be there for her.”
Excerpted from Home Again by Kristin Hannah
Madelaine took a deep, steadying breath and marched into the lion’s den.
He was sleeping. Thank God.
She stood in the doorway, uncertain for a second as to her best course of action. She could turn around and leave right now or she could wake him up and talk to him. Or she could sit down beside him and look at him. Just look.
Quietly she closed the door shut behind her. Weak autumn sunlight shone through the small window, giving the room a respite from the cold impersonality of fluorescent lighting. The narrow, metal-framed bed cut the room in half.
He lay as motionless as death, the washed-out gray sheeting tucked haphazardly across his chest. Dark brown hair lay in a tangled heap against the white cotton of the pillow. His chiseled face looked sunken and too thin; his lips were pale. A stubbly growth of black beard shadowed his triangular jaw and darkened his upper lip.
Even so, he was so handsome he took her breath away.
She sank unsteadily to the chair. For a second she couldn’t think about his illness or what was at stake here. All she could think about was the past and how much she’d loved this man.
He had swept her, laughing, into a whole new world. A world of lights and possibility and hope, a place where rules and responsibility didn’t exist. She’d clung to him, giggling, believing, following wherever he led, so proud that hers was the hand he wanted to hold. She’d fallen in love with him in the wild, abandoned way that only teenagers could. Made excuses during the day to be together, sneaking from her father’s austere house in the middle of the night. It was the first time she’d ever disobeyed her father, and it had made her feel recklessly confident.
With the distance of so many years, she knew that she’d never really fallen in love with him, not in the way that lasts. She’d been consumed by his brushfire passion, transformed by him.
There had been that night, under the old oak tree at Carrington Park….
They’d been lying in the grass, staring up at the night sky, wishing on stars, sharing their dreams, holding each other. But she’d known it was time to go home. Her father would be getting back from his business trip.
She pulled away from him, staring down the long, darkened street. The thought of leaving him, returning to that cold house and her even colder father, made her feel almost sick with desperation. “I don’t want to go back….” She realized instantly that she’d said too much. She held her breath, waiting for Angel to call her silly or stupid or childish–all the words her father hurled at her with such regularity.
But he didn’t. He touched her cheek, gently turned her face to his. “Don’t. Stay with me. We could run away…raise a family…be a family….” Madelaine had never known what it could feel like to love someone until that moment. The emotion swept through her, filling her soul with heat until, suddenly, she was laughing, and then she was crying. “I love you, Angel.”
Ah…it had been so painfully sweet…
He pulled her into his arms, held her so tightly, she couldn’t breathe. Together they dropped to their knees in the spongy grass. She felt his hands on her, stroking her hair, her back, her hips. And then he was kissing her, tasting her tears, claiming her so completely with his mouth that she felt dizzy.
At last he drew back and stared down at her. There was an intensity in his eyes that stole her breath, made her heart beat wildly. “I love you, Madelaine. I don’t…I mean, I’ve never…” Tears squeezed past his eyelashes and he started to wipe them away.
She stopped his hand. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.
He gave her a trembling smile. In that instant she understood so much about him, about the way he was. He went about swaggering and blustering and acting like the rebel, but on the inside he was just like her. Scared and confused and lonely. He didn’t believe in himself, didn’t think he was good, but he was–she believed in him enough for both of them. And he loved her like no one had ever loved her before….
Such powerful, powerful words: I love you…
After that, she’d told him everything, opened her heart and soul to him and let him become a part of her. Without him, she hadn’t thought she could live.
What if he could do that to her again?
She forced herself to remember the other things, the other moments, letting the pain wash through her in a cold, cleansing sweep.
She’d thought she’d forgiven him for what he’d done to her–for leaving her without so much as a good-bye. Honestly, truly, she thought she had. Time and again she’d replayed the sequence of events in her head. She told herself she didn’t blame Angel for running out on her. She told herself that seventeen was young, so young, and with each advancing year of her life, it felt younger still. She told herself it had been for the best, that they never would have made it, that they would have ruined each other’s lives.
Yes, she’d told herself a lot of things, but now, in this second, staring down at him, she recognized the truth at last. They were lies, all of them lies. Pretty foil paper on a dark, ugly gift.
….
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