Synopsis:
What if the person you thought you’d lost forever walked back into your life?
How to Find Your Way Home examines the unshakable bond between siblings, and what happens when a sister discovers her long-missing brother in a most unexpected place.
Emily has been looking for the same face in every crowd for more than a decade, although she never truly believed that one day he would walk through the door of the London housing office where she works, homeless and in need of help.
But one day she does. And Emily is overjoyed to see Stephen — her older brother, her hero, the one who taught her to look for the flash of a bird’s wings and instilled in her a love and respect for nature’s wonders. She invites him to live with her.
But the baggage of the day that tore them apart so many years ago is heavy.
As they attempt to rebuild their relationship, they embark on the birding adventure they promised to take when they were just children running wild in the wetlands of Canvey Island. And so, amid the soft, familiar calls of the marsh birds, they finally confront what happened that June day — and on all the days since — if they are to finally find their way home to each other.
Review:
How to Find Your Way Home, Regan’s sixth novel, is a beautifully crafted and deeply moving examination of a family torn apart by betrayals, lies, and alliances, and the impact they have upon the individual members’ lives.
In a third-person narrative, Regan details events beginning in 1987 when newborn Emily Adele Nelson was introduced to her older brother, Stephen. Those chapters alternate with a first-person account from Emily, commencing in March 2018, as well as another third person narrative focused on Stephen that correlates with what Emily is experiencing. The siblings grew up exploring the English marshes and the birds that inhabited them. Stephen was a typical energetic boy, but also sensitive and thoughtful. And totally enamored with all kinds of birds. Tagging after and wanting to emulate him, Emily shared his devotion and, with their father, birdwatching and studying about birds were integral to their lives.
But Regan establishes at the outset that Emily, living in London, is preparing to celebrate her thirty-first birthday, a day that will bring her “another year further from the day in ’99 Stephen was taken from me.” She searches the internet in vain for him or a mention of him, a clue to his whereabouts. She is in the latest in a long string of short-lived relationships and, by all outward appearances, seems to be a happy woman with friends and a stable career. But she reveals that she “can’t do life, you see, everything feels wrong; I can’t make plans or commit to anything, I can’t love or be loved. Not while there’s this piece of me missing, this giant hole in my heart.”
Stephen has spent the past fifteen years living on and off the streets, his latest homeless stint having spanned six weeks. Now thirty-five years old, he has served time in prison and battled substance abuse, but is currently sober. He has learned how to navigate an unwelcoming world and survive harsh conditions, always taking solace from the birds he still loves. He sells a few sketches of them to earn money. Two things have kept him alive: hope and his beloved birds. “I had my birds. They’ve saved me,” Stephen says. He has been estranged from their mother for a long time, and her life took an unhappy turn at some point. She has been caring for their profoundly disabled stepfather, Mitch, for years, even though Emily has consistently urged her to place Mitch in a care facility. Emily dares not mention Stephen to their mother, although Regan does not initially reveal what caused the rift between them. Their father has remarried and is preoccupied with his stepchildren, his relationships with both Emily and Stephen strained.
Stephen arrives in Emily’s head each morning before she leaves for work, her thoughts “laced with anxiety: Where was he today? How was he? What was he doing right now? Occasionally I’d just be treated to a memory, a lovely one,” often associated with excursions to the marshes to see their cherished birds. Emily works as a housing officer at a social services agency tasked with placing suitable applicants in public housing accommodations. Of course, there is a housing shortage — 1.15 million names are on the waiting list — and stringent requirements that too many applicants cannot meet. She notes that “life begins with a roof over your hear, doesn’t it? Without that, nothing can take off.” Ironically, she has a lovely apartment filled with things she loves, yet “it doesn’t feel like I live here. Sometimes, when I open the front door, I feel like a visitor.” Every day, she hopes that Stephen, her homeless brother, will be among the countless people who come to the agency seeking assistance.
And then one day, she becomes aware of a familiar voice. It jolts her back to a day when she was about ten years old and Stephen was fourteen or fifteen. In her memory, Mitch is “bellowing” at Stephen as Emily tries to show their mother a shoe box inside of which is a tiny injured bird. Stephen is trying to explain that he wanted to save the bird, repeating, “You don’t understand . . .” exactly as he is currently expressing his frustration at not being eligible for housing to Emily’s colleague in the next room. Emily realizes that she is not dreaming. She is really hearing her brother’s voice for the first time in years. But he leaves the agency before Emily can get to him. At least she knows he is alive and begins searching the area for him.
Regan instantly draws readers into the psyches of Emily, Stephen, and their parents, establishing their fraught relationships with each other and current circumstances. Cleverly, she does not reveal at the outset what caused the family to fracture or how a sweet young boy like Stephen has become a homeless thirty-five-year-old man with a criminal record.
Regan illustrates with tenderness and compassion that finding Stephen is just the beginning of a new journey for the family. When Emily locates him, he initially denies that he has a sister. However, after thinking about it, he reaches out to her and accepts her invitation to stay with him. She is determined to help Stephen get his life back on track, and he is delighted to be reunited with her, but interacting with her and her friends proves challenging for a man who hasn’t enjoyed “normal” social interactions for nearly two decades. And he wants Emily to inform their mother that he is staying with her because he wants to be reunited with his Mum, as well. Stephen has missed their mother — perhaps most of all — but Emily admits that while Stephen stays with her, “Every day I resolved to tell Mum that Stephen was here, and every day I failed.” That failure initiates a series of events that cause all four family members to reevaluate their choices and feelings.
Regan makes expert use of the alternating chapters, gradually disclosing the betrayal that set in motion the disintegration of their family. Stephen and Emily were youngsters unequipped to deal with their parents’ issues. Worse, Mitch was very different from their father — a decorated veteran who bullied Stephen, mocking his love of birds, verbally abusing him about his refusal to consume meat, and complaining that he brought “revolting half-dead creatures into the house.” Mitch threatened to kill the birds Stephen valiantly sought to save, and little Emily witnessed their horrifying interactions while their mother wrung her hands helplessly. Mitch was never smart enough to understand what Stephen knew from a very early age. That “birdwatching was all about being still and it was where life was for him, where the thrills were, if you were patient enough to wait for them.”
Emily and Stephen work to mend their relationship so that they can move forward, but they must first reconcile the past. Their recollections about a traumatic event and its repercussions are different, but getting to the truth is essential to their ability to forge a new, lasting alliance. Regan skillfully depicts their exchanges through believable inner struggles and resonant dialogue. They embark on the adventure they promised themselves as children they would one day enjoy together — experiencing the events on the Top Five list Stephen compiled so many years ago that includes spotting two rare birds in twenty-four hours and watching the swifts’ migration from the Spurn Peninsula. They argue about how to navigate to the various locations, vehicle maintenance, and other matters in ways that readers with siblings will find completely relatable. And in the process they work through what tore them apart.
But can they reconcile the past? And when the full truth is at last revealed, will their bond remain unbreakable? Will the revelation of the truth facilitate understanding and forgiveness by their mother? Will Stephen at last find a permanent home where he can be content? Can Emily finally feel whole and at ease in her own life?
Regan answers each of those questions in a dramatic, but emotionally satisfying manner. In the process, she examines the ways that childhood trauma impacts her characters and shapes the course of their lives. She also explores how mistaken beliefs, faulty memory, a mother’s failure to protect her children, and an older sibling’s determination to shield his sister from pain cause fissures in a once close-knit family. Ultimately, Regan demonstrates that forgiveness is possible and can facilitate the restoration of familial bonds if the family members are willing to acknowledge their own role in the disintegration of their relationships and accept each others’ truths. Indeed, sometimes those truths were apparent all along, but never voiced or validated.
How to Find Your Way Home is a must-read selection for readers who enjoy stories about families and, more particularly, siblings who overcome turmoil in their relationships and deal with its impact upon their lives. Regan’s compelling characters and insightful story are memorable, impactful, and uplifting. And affirm it is possible to feel as if everything you’ve ever lost is coming back to you — all of it coming home.
Excerpt from How to Find Your way Home
There’s me, standing at the open bathroom window again, the ladder up against it, so close I can touch it, a figure halfway up it. There’s a storm brewing. I can feel the wind picking up, the air growing cooler; I can sense it rolling in from the estuary, across the marsh edge-lands before me, which lie under a blanket of leaden sky, the dark clouds contrasting with the grass, making it seem a brighter green, like a football pitch under floodlights. And now the swifts . . . I can hear their screams from far away, but getting nearer. They are just black dots at first, but then their scythe-shaped wings come into focus, and soon they’re so close I can make out their individual feathers. They come thick and fast, a black cloud, flying past the ladder and into the bathroom, as if fleeing from the storm. The wind is making the ladder shudder, the glass of the open window shake. “Stop!” scream the swifts. “You’re going to kill him.” Then the ladder falls backward, in slow motion. An almighty thud as something hits the ground. The figure at the bottom now, blood seeping from a wound I can’t see. I watch it, spilling outward, spreading over the marshes, turning the hay russet like the fur of a wounded animal, creeping like a trickling brook, out toward the sea.
“STORK”
Canvey Island, Essex
1987
Whoosh! Stephen woke to the sound of his bedroom curtains being pulled open.
“Well, Stevie, you’ve got a new sister,” Dad said. “Emily Adele Nelson-born three hours ago. She’s absolutely perfect.”
Stephen pulled himself up on his pillows, his legs jiggling already, his chest feeling as if something was trying to get out, he was so excited.
Outside, the sky was gold and pink over Canvey Marshes, and there was a beam of sun across his duvet cover. The birds were singing, too, but extra loud, as if it were a special hello to the baby: Welcome to your first day in the world!
Four days later, Stephen stood at the front room window with Grandma Paradiso, waiting for Mum and his new baby sister to arrive back from hospital.
“When will they be here, Grandma?”
“Anytime now, Stephen, just be patient. That jiggling your legs won’t make her come any faster.”
***
While they waited, Grandma explained how a stork had brought his new sister, how babies’ souls about to be born lay in the marshes where storks made their nests, and waited patiently until a stork came, picked them up, and delivered them to their new family. Stephen wondered if the stork would still be there now, with Mummy and Emily-that’s if they ever arrived.
***
Less than ten minutes later an ambulance came trundling around the corner. Not with a blue light or a nee-naw, but calmly like an ice cream van. It had to go slow because it was carrying precious treasure. Grandma Paradiso came with Stephen outside. There was a man in a green uniform opening the back doors of the ambulance. He asked Stephen if he’d like to come and look inside and Stephen looked up at his grandma, who smiled and said, “It’s all right, love,” and gave him a gentle push. “Off you go.”
The inside of the ambulance looked how he imagined a spaceship might look, with tubes and pumps and switches everywhere. There was a bed on wheels with a green blanket over it that looked itchy and, at the back, a big blue chair, where Mummy was sitting, holding the baby, beaming. She was wearing no lipstick, her hair was unbrushed, and Stephen had never seen her look more happy or beautiful.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said, quietly. “Come and meet your new sister.”
The baby was wrapped up like a caterpillar cocoon, and she was crying, like a kitten. Daddy helped Mummy and the baby out of the ambulance and inside. Mummy sat down on the couch, holding Emily; Stephen sat beside them. He couldn’t stop looking at this precious present the stork had brought. Grandma Paradiso was saying “aah, aw,” and Daddy was going back and forth, bringing cups of tea, saying “hee-hee!” to himself and rubbing his hands together. He put down steaming cups for Mummy and Grandma, then all of a sudden grabbed Stephen and hugged him so tight it was hard to breathe, but Stephen didn’t care; he’d never felt happiness like it.
“Stephen, do you want to hold her?” he said and Stephen wanted to, badly, but looked at Mummy, who said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sweetheart. Maybe in a few days when she’s a bit bigger.” So Stephen had to make do with just stroking her head instead, which wasn’t hard like his, but squishy on top like the blow-up mattress he slept on at Grandma and Grandad Paradiso’s house, which was called “El Paradiso,” hence the name he’d assigned to his maternal grandparents.
Grandma Paradiso slapped her knees. “Oh, Alicia, come on. It’s not every day he gets to meet his little sister, is it? As long as he’s careful. Maybe with cushions on the couch?”
And so, Daddy helped him get propped up on the cushions. He had to sit really straight and still, with his back against the couch.
“Oh, Stephen, look at that, the moment of truth!” said Grandma. Then Mummy passed the baby to him, as carefully as if she were Jesus. She was much lighter than he expected-as light as putting a teddy on his knee-and she made funny, squirmy faces, and when she yawned, the bright red inside reminded him of a picture in one of his nature books that he loved so much, of a baby thrush, waiting to be fed. All these things together made him giggle with delight and look up to his mother, who drew in a breath. “Be careful, Stevie, she’s not a doll, you know. If you drop her . . .”
“I won’t drop her,” he said, never more certain of anything in his life. He was the big brother now, after all, and it was his job to love and protect his little sister, to keep her safe forever.
ONE
Emily
London
March 2018
If you’d looked through the window that Saturday evening in early March, what would you have seen? A warmly lit open-plan space for living and dining. In the foreground, a vintage leather sofa, a ’60s floor lamp emanating a cozy orange glow. Further back, a dining table, tastefully laid with Moroccan-inspired eclectic crockery and flickering with tea lights.
Finally, at the very back, the kitchen area; bijou but chic with its metro tiles and aluminum pendant lights over the kitchen island and hob, on which there is a tagine bubbling and, beside it, a man: tall, boyishly chiseled and fair-haired, the sleeves of his navy-blue shirt rolled up to reveal toned forearms, stoning fresh lychees, a cocktail shaker at the ready.
Does he live alone? You might wonder. Perhaps too many feminine touches for this to be a bachelor pad. And you’d be right. Although you wouldn’t have seen me, owner and sole official inhabitant of this apartment, chief orchestrator of this picture of aspirational living-thirtysomething urbanites preparing to entertain. That’s because I am upstairs, up the polished slatted staircase to the right, still in a towel after my shower, hair in a turban, sitting on my bed in the light of my laptop. I’ve got Facebook open, my heart up somewhere near my throat, where it seems to live permanently these days, as I type the name into the search box:
Kem>Stephen Nelson
I haven’t done this for a while, but it’s my birthday next week, another year further from that June day he was taken from me. Almost twenty years ago now. And the gravitational pull toward him becomes inescapable around this time. I always step up the search.
I click on “show all” and press my palms together, fingertips to my lips in an unconscious praying action. Facebook reveals sixty-one of them. I scroll down to where I left off yesterday: ten Stephen Nelsons down, fifty-one to go. Why couldn’t he have been called Xavier or, I dunno, Piers? This would all have been so much easier.
Stephen Nelson number eleven is a Man Utd supporter (that’s him out, then) and appears to have met Barry Manilow several times (that’s definitely him out). Number twelve went to Preston Poly but has somehow found himself living in Kazakhstan. Moving on. Number thirteen, though? “Artist,” it says, avatar of an eagle-my stomach seems to float. I click on it, my pulse drumming, but this Stephen Nelson must be seventy if he’s a day, and so I close my laptop with a defeated sigh just as my boyfriend, James-the handsome lychee peeler with the nice forearms, I’m sure you guessed that-pops his head around the bedroom door, face full of affection and, I know it, lust. We’ve only been together five months and are very much still in that stage. The stage I don’t ever seem able to get beyond, before things fizzle out, for reasons that currently baffle me.
“Hi.” I smile.
“Hi,” he says. “I brought you a little livener.” And he puts a martini, complete with lychee pinned to the glass rim, on the bedside table. I thank him. He tips his head to the side and smiles at me. He has very sexy dimples. Then he frowns. “You on Facebook again? Em, you know it makes you feel crap, and anyway, shouldn’t you be getting ready, sweetheart? They’ll be here in twenty minutes . . . In fact, just enough time . . .”
And he hops onto the bed.
“Just enough?” I tease. “You’ll be lucky to last half that.”
“Right!” And with that he burrows and growls into my neck, pretending to eat it as I squeal with laughter, pulling my towel tighter. “Get off! I’m joking! We do not have enough time!”
So he flounces off in a mock huff and the smile drops from my face as I put my laptop on the floor, my chest tight because I know that’s it until tomorrow now-and I set about getting ready quickly. I leave my hair to dry naturally wavy and put on mascara, lipstick, and the outfit I chose a week ago: a light-gray pleated skirt and hot-orange scoop-back T-shirt with the slogan “Happy Days” across the middle. Silver hoops. Bare feet. It’s an ensemble I hope hits just the right note on the effort scale, that says I’m totally at ease in my own skin, my own home.
Ten seconds later, the doorbell rings and I go downstairs to find James is already greeting Dan and Vanessa, who are ebullient, excited to have been invited for dinner at their best friend’s new girlfriend’s flat at last, laden with gifts of orchids and botanical gins. This will be the third time we’ve met and also marks one of the last evenings I remember of my old life. The life I had constructed like the tough, prickled outer shell of a horse chestnut around me, before it was cracked open and the truth of my life was laid bare, as frighteningly untouched and uncharted as that shiny conker hidden inside.
***
“Hey, big fella!” I can hear the man-slap Dan gives James from the kitchen, where Vanessa and I are doing the female greeting equivalent, which is complimenting each other on our outfits. (I am dismayed to see she is as groomed as Meghan Markle, whereas my hair’s still damp and I haven’t got shoes on.) I’m glad of that livener martini and thankful to get stuck into more, get everyone relaxed and having fun. You never know, I think, wryly, maybe even you . . . I bring out the canapes I’ve made.
“Oh my God.” Vanessa reaches enthusiastically for a mini chorizo toad-in-the-hole with her impeccably manicured hands. “You got a takeaway curry when you came to ours. I feel awful! You’ve gone to so much effort.”
“Don’t be daft. I have not.” I tut while ignoring the look on James’s face, and the fact that his eyebrows have shot up somewhere by his hairline. He got up at two this morning to find I was still awake, poring over my cookbooks and the weekend food supplements I rip out for inspiration.
“Darlin’, you do know it’s just my mates coming, don’t you?” he’d said. “Not Marco Pierre White.”
Dan is James’s best friend from university and works as a property developer. I’m a housing officer in the council’s homeless department, so you could say we work on opposite sides of the same coin. James is an architect. That’s how we met, at a residents’ meeting about an estate that was up for demolition. He seemed as passionate as me about people being kicked out of their homes, funnily enough.
Dan, on the other hand, operates refreshingly shamelessly from the dark side. Not conventionally attractive, maybe, but what he lacks in looks he makes up for in charisma and flamboyant shirts-tonight, a gecko-covered Hawaiian number even though it’s still very much winter, and pouring with rain outside. Vanessa, his wife, is the kind of woman so confident in her own skin, she doesn’t need an Adonis on her arm to make her feel good anyway.
She looks around. “This flat is gorgeous. You have such good taste.”
“It is a super flat,” adds Dan.
“Oh God,” I say. “It was dirt cheap and an eyesore when I bought it. I had no furniture. Luckily, I love rummaging in charity shops. I’ll take any old crap from a skip and upcycle it.”
Vanessa looks perplexed at my total inability to take a compliment. “Well, it’s beautiful,” she says, simply.
“Yeah, she’s got great taste, haven’t you, babe?” says James. “Especially in men.”
“I’d say it’s questionable at best.” Dan chuckles and I laugh along, simultaneously feeling he’s hit a nerve. As I’ve said, I don’t have a great track record in that department-no one seems to stick. Please, God, let this be different, I think, enjoying the warm feeling the alcohol is giving me, looking over at James. He’s certainly handsome and he’s kind. Too kind sometimes; it makes me nervous. Makes me feel like I don’t deserve it.
“So, our news,” says Dan over dinner, “is that we’re moving to the country!”
“Bloody hell, people.” James laughs. “Four beds not enough for you?”
“I know, we’re just disgusting,” says Vanessa, unapologetically. (That, I realize, is exactly what they are-unapologetic-it’s kind of refreshing.) “But we want more space. I want to try for another baby soon, and as everyone knows I want at least one more after that.”
Dan rolls his eyes affectionately. “Only if I can have my Porsche Cayenne, honey, that was the arrangement!”
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