A thoughtful, deeply human journey through love, loss, and belonging…
Thompson’s absorbing novel traces one man’s search for connection across continents and decades. The story follows Dr. George Harrington, a single father who leaves Paris with his twelve-year-old son, Hugo, for public-health work in Asia. As professional demands, changing countries, and Hugo’s growing independence reshape their lives, George begins a decades-long search for belonging amid changing relationships and shifting definitions of family.
Spanning twenty-two years, Thompson’s character-driven narrative finds its strongest emotional current in George and Hugo’s evolving father-son bond. George’s work in communicable disease lends the novel an unusual international backdrop while creating a persuasive tension between professional purpose and parental responsibility. Thompson is equally attentive to the quieter dislocations of expatriate life: unfamiliar streets becoming routine, temporary rooms acquiring emotional weight, and departures turning once-foreign places into objects of longing. The episodic, travel-rich narrative can be leisurely, and its descriptive passages occasionally slow the momentum. Still, George’s observant first-person voice gives the novel an intimate, memoir-like quality. The result is a tender, perceptive exploration of parenthood, wanderlust, loneliness, and the realization that belonging may have less to do with geography than affection.
***
Pub date July 23, 2026
ISBN 979-8902139980
Price $2.99 Kindle edition, $0.00 Kindle Unlimited
