The Year We Left Home

by Jean Thompson

After reading the final chapter of ‘The Year We Left Home’, I felt a pang of regret. I would miss the Erickson family of Grenada, Iowa. I would miss them despite their flaws and BECAUSE of them.  Jean Thompson so thoroughly knew this family and presented them in such vivid detail, that I am now sure that I knew them too; that I have met bits of pieces of them in my years of growing up and living in the Midwest. 

The story begins in 1972 at Anita Erickson’s wedding reception. Just out of high school and getting married, this is the future that Anita always saw for herself. Tending to details of the reception and carting in the wedding gifts, we meet Anita’s siblings: Ryan who is just heading off to college, Blake and his vamp of a girlfriend, Torrie, the cynical baby of the family, and Chip, their degenerate cousin. It is winter in Iowa and the reception is held at the VFW. Thompson imagery had me holding a plastic cup filled with punch and smelling the smorgasbord of food that is served on Styrofoam plates.

The story of The Erickson’s is a story in which we all are familiar. We meet the Erickson's at a point when Anita and Ryan must take over steering their own futures; Blake and Torrie have a few remaining years but their leaving is looming on the horizon with both dread and excitement. The novel travels the back roads of Iowa, to Chicago and to the western United States. It comes full circle after thirty years of  struggles, tragedies and concessions when the family all land, fairly intact, back in Grenada to deal with some unexpected beginnings and endings.