8 Novels About Returning to the Places We Leave Behind

I had a plan for the year I turned 30: I was going to leave behind the life I’d spent a decade building in New York City and trade it in for a warmer, flashier iteration in Los Angeles. That’s a well-tread trope, isn’t it? The old “NYC to LA to NYC to LA ad infinitum” was immortalized in The New Yorker circa 2016 when I was 27—around the time I’d dreamed this whole “turning 30” plan up. I told anyone who would listen that my Saturn Return was coming up and—if astrology was to be believed—that meant the alignment of the planets allegedly had a big change coming for me. I decided this big change looked like canceling my New Yorker subscription, renting an apartment with arched doorways, and becoming the poet laureate of the smoking tent at the Chateau Marmont. 

I signed a lease on my new apartment the day before I turned 30. But it wasn’t in West Hollywood, or Santa Monica, or Silver Lake. It was in Asbury Park: the Springsteen-esque little city by the beach in Monmouth County, New Jersey—a mere 20 minutes from the house I grew up in. It turns out you can’t actually plan for your Saturn Return, it just sort of happens to you. (The age old, “people make plans, Saturn laughs.”) Between the time I’d decided to reshape my life in the childhood Hollywood image I’d dreamt for myself and the time I actually turned 30, I fell in love with my best friend from college. He had recently returned from the west coast after spending most of his 20s in Portland, Oregon and started working for his family’s business on the Jersey Shore. We discussed different routes of cohabitation (would he move to Brooklyn and complete an inverse commute every day? Would we move somewhere totally new and change our names and start over?) before settling on the sanest-seeming option: I would return to Monmouth County, where I’d grown up, and we would live in Asbury Park. 

I have a hard time remembering the first homecoming story I fell in love with. I think—like all of Springsteen’s discography—I avoided them until I was in a position to seek them out. Moving to Asbury Park felt, mostly, like a big victory. I was starting a life with someone I’d known and loved since we were teenagers living in dorm rooms next door to one other. But there was a nagging part of me that felt ashamed at the prospect of “moving back home”—renouncing my metropolitan lifestyle and returning from whence I came. I’d tethered so much of my identity to living in New York City (and, yes, to my plans for a Didion-esque foray to California) that I was worried about unraveling in my new/old zip code. I agonized over the move in therapy for months before packing up my Brooklyn apartment. I cried on the long subway rides to work that I’d always hated, fearing I’d miss them once I was finally rid of them. I sought out stories that mirrored my complicated feelings about coming home. I set out to write a homecoming novel myself. In the process of plotting my own story on the New Jersey Transit commute every morning, I grew to love the small-town details I was writing down. I hunted them down in other people’s stories and savored what I found. I kept collecting homecoming novels I loved until I felt like a connoisseur. 

My homecoming novel, Welcome Home, Caroline Kline, features a 29-year-old protagonist (hello, Saturn Return!) who returns home to Monmouth County amidst a chaotic spell and learns to let go of what she thought her life would look like in order to embrace the beauty of what it has the potential to become. When I think of Caroline, I think about how she is in excellent company with the other homeward bound heroes who preceded her and will sit on my shelf beside her. 

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

30 years old and hot off a broken engagement, Ruth returns home to care for her father—a respected professor who is losing his memory—and documents both of their daily progress in short epistolary entries. Taut at 200 pages and razor sharp, I fell in love with Khong’s unrivaled knack for melding grief with humor.

Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

Vesper Wright is the hottest, meanest server that the suburban chain restaurant Shortee’s has ever seen. When she gets an invitation to the wedding of her best friend and her ex-boyfriend, she reluctantly trudges home to the tight knit religious family that she’d once escaped. Upon arrival she has to contend with the community she left behind, her (even hotter and meaner) scream queen actress mother, and her cult-leader-esque father. I don’t know that there’s ever been a homecoming story more hilarious or horrifying.

Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst

After Mickey discovers she’s being pushed out of her coveted media job, she pens a scathing manifesto about her experience working as a Black woman in the industry. When the open letter is met with crickets, she retreats to her hometown where the familiar environment, change in pace, and reappearance of a former flame force her to take inventory of the life she’s been building. Denton-Hurst’s own professional background lends authenticity to the story and the details are catnip for anyone who ever worked in—or aspired to—the New York City media landscape.

Maame by Jessica George

Maddie is a quintessential twenty-something protagonist juggling all the trappings of big city living in London that a) remind me so acutely of certain memories as a twenty-something in New York City and b) comprise a perfect coming of age novel. She navigates work strife, roommate tension, internet dating, potent grief, and complicated family dynamics with grit and grace. George has made a stunning debut with Maame and I cannot wait to see what she does next. 

Holding Pattern by Jenny Xie

After blowing up her life and returning to the home she grew up in, Kathleen is in pursuit of a different path. She takes a job as a professional cuddler and navigates intimacy in a new way, forcing her to reassess her closest relationships—including and especially the one she has with her mother.

Central Places by Delia Cai

We meet Audrey en route from NYC to her midwest hometown over holiday break, where she’s bracing to introduce her white fiancé to her Chinese immigrant parents. Faced with fraught family dynamics and old crushes, introspection and messiness ensues. Cai’s debut is perfect if you love simmering familial tensions, complicated old friendships, and the tough task of trying to reconcile who you used to be with who you are now. 

Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky

Allison is restarting her life on the coast of North Carolina after fleeing a bad boyfriend in Hollywood, but right after she relocates, she is forced to move back to her New Jersey hometown once a hurricane rips through and sets off a surreal whirlwind of cataclysmic events for her. I was gripped by Dermansky’s signature stark, hilarious prose and how deftly she brought both violent and tender moments to life in these pages. 

Rock the Boat by Beck Dorey-Stein

A Jersey Shore story after my own heart! I love when stories start off with a Legally Blonde-esque dust-up (as in: “we’re not getting engaged, actually, we’re breaking up”) and I love it even more when said dust-up sends our heroine packing for her seaside hometown to get her life back on track. Bolstered by a cast of characters that feel like decades-old friends, Dorey-Stein’s summer-y triumph is a masterful blend of humor and heart.