Alison DeLory

Many of the characters in Making it Home by Alison DeLory are unsettled or displaced by forces beyond their control and must find a way to cope with momentous and even catastrophic change in their lives. It is 2014, and in Falkirk Cove, on Cape Breton Island, pig-headed Tinker Gordon does not welcome change. A retired fisherman, happily married to Flo, he is still mourning the loss of their son Russell, who in 2009 moved to Alberta for work and was killed in an industrial accident. When Russell’s son Charlie informs his grandfather that he’s also heading west in pursuit of a job, Tinker responds churlishly, as if Charlie’s action is a betrayal and not a response to real-life pressures. In Alberta, Charlie finds work, but not everything goes according to plan, and for a while he falls out of contact with his grandparents, who naturally worry. Meanwhile, Tinker and Flo are contacted by a woman from Toronto named Courtney, who informs them that she is the mother of Russell’s son Alex, who is five. Flo is delighted to learn that she is a grandmother again and that Charlie has a half-brother, but Tinker is suspicious and unwilling to accept Courtney's claims at face value. Meanwhile, in war-ravaged Syria, Sami, a doctor, Amira, his pregnant wife, and their young son and daughter are forced by the fighting to abandon their home in Aleppo and make their way to the border. After some tense moments, they pass into Turkey, where they end up in cramped, uncomfortable quarters in a refugee camp facing an uncertain future. Back in Cape Breton, Alex visits Flo and Tinker and wins their hearts, Charlie returns home, and a movement begins to raise money in order to bring a Syrian refugee family to Falkirk Cove, a project to which Flo enthusiastically devotes herself but which Tinker has difficulty accepting because of a prejudice against the unknown and an inherently stick-in-the-mud nature. DeLory tells a multi-faceted story in a straightforward manner, both chronologically and dramatically, in numerous brief chapters and using unadorned prose. The action, which centres around the universal struggle that all people face to make a better life for themselves, moves briskly along toward a satisfying denouement. The scenes set in Syria and Turkey are particularly effective and heart-rending. In her debut novel, DeLory writes convincingly and with confidence from multiple points of view and generates great empathy for her characters. As a work of fiction, Making it Home does not break new ground. It is occasionally predictable and is not entirely devoid of sentiment. But the story it tells is a very human one: compelling, timely and necessary.… (altro)