“Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.”

This book kept my interest from beginning to end. One of those reads where I was excited to have a moment to pick up and start the next chapter. I read this mostly late at night while feeding my infant son. A dark story during the dark of the night. My sweet baby resting on one side, a book on the other.

Historical fiction without a lot of the hard history - as a history lover I never found myself thinking "wait a second, that's not accurate to the time period." The author uses major events and common activities of the time as the background to the main story (or stories) of her travelers. I found myself, like the narrator, genuinely interested in each characters life and intrigued by their development throughout the journey. There were characters I loved, empathized with, and down right could not stand. I was cheering for the lot with each plot twist and turn. A wonderful example of "what you see isn't always as it seems."

The ending, in my opinion, was perfectly done. It takes a lot to shock me or catch me off guard in stories and this accomplished both.