(Twenty-one years ago, Jewel Sabatino left her childhood behind and never looked back. After a magical taste of fame, she found herself alone with a son to raise and very few options. Now she has left New York for the hills of Colorado, unsure if her family will welcome her back. For Jewel, coming home is falling into a world that smells of Italian restaurants and home-baked pies. It is the laughter of sisters preparing for a summer wedding. It also means facing the unforgiving eyes of a father betrayed by his favorite child?and letting go of a son who is ready to become a man. But most of all, it is the love she unexpectedly discovers in her own wary heart. . . .

Setting: Pueblo, Colorado

Sensuality: 7

Voluptuous Jewel Sabatino kicked over the traces of her Catholic Italian family and ran off with a guitar player when she was only 17--shaking the dust of Pueblo, Colorado, from her fast-moving feet. Her furious father disowned her while her mother and three sisters missed her desperately. When she's compelled to return 21 years later, with her 17-year-old son, Shane, and terminally ill best friend, Michael, in tow, her father still isn't speaking to her. Thirty or so members of her extended family are, however, and welcome her home with open arms.

Jewel isn't planning to return to Pueblo for good. She needs the sanctuary of the farm she's inherited in order to care for Michael, and when he dies she intends to return to her life in New York City. But as Jewel finds herself becoming more and more immersed in the familial web, she learns that the ties that once choked and bound now represent a loving system that both support and uphold. And when Michael's brother, Malachi, arrives, Jewel finds that love can happen at any age.

While the dominant thread in No Place Like Home is romantic, the novel also addresses universal family themes--from siblings struggling to find their own identities in a large family to the often painful and never easy bonds between father and daughter, sister and sister, mother and son--in a touching story of love and loss. --Lois Dyer

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.