The Home Place: A Novel

Carrie La Seur makes her remarkable debut with The Home Place, a mesmerizing, emotionally evocative, and atmospheric literary novel in the vein of The House Girl and A Land More Kind Than Home, in which a successful lawyer is pulled back into her troubled family’s life in rural Montana in the wake of her sister’s death.

The only Terrebonne who made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, with its bleak winters and stifling ways. But an unexpected call from the local police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she’d left far behind: Her lying, party-loving sister, Vicky, is dead. Alma is told that a very drunk Vicky had wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. But when Alma returns home to bury Vicky and see to her orphaned niece, she discovers that the death may not have been an accident.

The Home Place is a story of secrets that will not lie still, human bonds that will not break, and crippling memories that will not be silenced. It is a story of rural towns and runaways, of tensions corporate and racial, of childhood trauma and adolescent betrayal, and of the guilt that even forgiveness cannot ease. Most of all, this is a story of the place we carry in us always: home.

Alma Terrebonne thought she was done with Montana, with its cruel poverty, bleak winters, and stifling ways. Hard work and steely resolve got her to Yale, and now she's an attorney in a high-profile Seattle law firm. But an unexpected call from the Montana police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she'd escaped.

Her lying, party-loving younger sister, Vicky, is dead. The Billings police say that a very drunk Vicky wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. But once Alma is back in town, she discovers that Vicky's death may not have been an accident. Needing to make peace with the sister she left behind, Alma sets out to find the truth.

“Powerfully evocative and page-turning.” - Rosamund Lupton, New York Times-bestselling author of SISTER and AFTERWARDS

“La Seur makes a very assured debut. Her characters are rich and believable; the plot is perfectly paced with mystery and romance enough to keep the reader hooked. And it’s all played against a beautifully drawn Montana backdrop.” - Booklist

“La Seur entices readers with impeccable prose imbued with a blend of romance, nostalgia and suspense.” - Kirkus Reviews

“A love story of the land and its people...captivating.” - Charleston Post & Courier

“Carrie La Seur spent a decade writing her debut, and it shows in the gorgeously crafted sentences, the layered characters, and the perfect evocation of our longing to find our place in the world. The Home Place is rooted both in La Seur’s own history as a lawyer and Montana ex-pat, and her deep understanding of human nature.” - Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times-bestselling author of six novels, most recently Someone Else's Love Story

“The Home Place is one of the year’s strongest debuts.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“It is always a treat when a talented writer chooses to write about her home, particularly when she does so with authority, clarity and imagination...The Home Place gives readers a stunning but frank look at what it means to be from Billings, Montana.” - BookPage

“Carrie La Seur’s debut is a gripping story of family, love and murder. Set against an indelibly drawn Montana landscape, The Home Place explores the intangible ways we are both defined by and in opposition to the people and places we call home.” - Tara Conklin, New York Times-bestselling author of The House Girl

“Walloping in suspense, drama, rage, and remorse, this debut is an accomplished literary novel of the new West.” - Library Journal