An internationally bestselling, award-winning novel peering deep into the passions, losses, and reveries of the wife of eighteenth-century explorer Captain James Cook.
After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. She has the fortitude to manage the house and garden, raise their children, and face unbearable sorrow by herself—in fact, she is sometimes in thrall to her own independence.
As she prepares for another homecoming, Elizabeth looks forward to James’s triumphant return and the work she will undertake reading and editing his voluminous journals. But will the private life she’s been leading in his absence distract her from her role in aid of her husband’s grand ambitions? Can James find the compassion to support her as their family faces unimaginable loss, or must she endure life alone as he sails off toward another adventure?
An intimate and sharply observed novel, The Homecoming is as revelatory as James Cook’s exploration of distant frontiers and as richly rewarding as Elizabeth’s love for her family. With courage and strength, through recollection and imagination, author Anna Enquist brilliantly narrates Elizabeth’s compelling record of her life, painting a psychological portrait of an independent woman ahead of her time and closely acquainted with history.
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Elizabeth, the wife of the seafaring explorer James Cook, had six children, and each one of them died. Three of the five boys succumbed to illness; the other two were lost at sea; and Elly, the only girl, was run over by a coach. Anna Enquist uses the difficult life of this captain’s wife, who herself would live to ninety-four, as the premise for her novel The Homecoming. It is a heart-wrenching novel, written with much empathy and psychological ingenuity. Enquist has taken the known biographical facts and made a new story from them using her own vision and denouement. Elizabeth spends most of her long life waiting. Waiting for her husband, who will not return from his third and final journey. Waiting for her sons, too, who will meet with just as disastrous an end while following in his footsteps. Enquist paints a penetrating picture of the inner life of her heroine, who must cope with one blow on top of another and still not throw in the towel. As an eighteenth-century wife, Elizabeth had little input into the decisions of her husband, the Admiralty, and the king of England—this much is as clear as day in the novel. Although there are plenty of opportunities for melodrama, The Homecoming steers away from this. There is room for heavy feelings: angst, hope, loss, and anger at all the premature deaths. Apart from describing emotional pain, Enquist also writes about scurvy and exotic cultures and lives. The revelations about the way in which Cook met his end on the Polynesian island of Tahiti are gruesome.
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OPZIJ (The Netherlands)