In On Homesickness—a book organized according to Kentucky geography, with one passage for each of the commonwealth’s 120 counties—Jesse Donaldson wonders if we can ever return to the places we’ve called home.
One day he wakes up in Portland, Oregon, and asks his wife to uproot their life together and move to his native Kentucky. As he searches for the reason behind this sudden urge, Donaldson examines both the place where he was born and the life he’s building. The result is a hybrid—part memoir, part meditation on nostalgia, part catalog of Kentucky history and myth.
Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt, calls this book “A wonderful prose poem, a beautiful meditation on homesickness and connection to place, and a celebration of Kentucky and that strange and undeniable connection that Kentuckians have to the state.”
Fenton Johnson, author of The Man Who Loved Birds, notes “Everyone who has left home, any home, anywhere, will want to read these, for a sobering assessment of why you left—along with all those who remained, for an equally rich assessment of the price of staying put."
Lia Purpura, author of Rough Likeness, says "In his ambitious and elegant long essay, Jesse Donaldson, modern day voyager, passionately wrestles with the question of home: where is home, how is a home imagined, why do we leave, and how might we (do we want to?) return?
To mark the publication of On Homesickness, Jesse Donaldson will read passages from his new book in all 120 counties in Kentucky. His 120-county tour will begin on October 24, 2017 at Brier Books in Lexington and will conclude at the Kentucky Book Fair on November 17, 2017. Other readings will take place at Carmichael’s Bookstore, Coffee Tree Books, Poor Richards Books, McCracken County Public Library, Murray State University, Lindsey Wilson College, and more. Jesse Donaldson is currently booking additional appearances.
Jesse Donaldson was born in Lexington, Kentucky, educated in Texas, and now lives in Oregon. He is the author of the novel The More They Disappear.
Publication date: September 2017
252pp/PB PB 978-1-946684-00-4: $17.99 / ePub 978-1-946684-01-1: $17.99 / 120
illustrations.
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