When Trying to Return Home

Starred review from December 5, 2022
McCauley’s explosive debut collection crackles with moments of honesty, upheaval, and longing among families. In “Torsion,” Black Pittsburgh college student Claudia hews to an unwavering love for her volatile single mother, a hair technician who struggled to support Claudia and her younger brother Sam, who is now in foster care and needs dialysis for his renal failure. In Claudia’s loyalty, she allows her mother to convince her to help take Sam from his white foster mother, so the family can be reunited. In “Trying to Return Home,” Andra constantly faces questions from white people about her ethnic background and takes to answering with a mix of vagueness and specificity. At her new job in south Florida, she says her father is “Black American; her mami Cagus-born, mixed with several Something Elses.” As she mourns her deceased mother, who neglected to fill her in on their family tree, McCauley offers an illuminating view of the complexity of Andra’s private life. “La Espera” features multiple points of view on a messy family situation, with sisters Elena and Camila and Elena’s husband, Carlos, the father of Camila’s 12-year-old twin daughters. In a poignant scene, the girls are dressed in bright dresses while waiting at their house in Puerto Rico for Carlos to visit them from New York City, where he lives with Elena (“Let’s impress him with your loveliness,” Camila tells them). Each story is a treasure.

Starred review from June 10, 2024

Psalm Morant and Andr�a Agosto, voice actors new to audiobook narration, sound like Audie Award-winning veterans in this exquisite debut by McCauley--a short story collection so polished, listeners simply won't believe it's a debut. While varying in length and geographic setting, the nine loosely connected stories all feature Black American and Afro-Puerto Rican characters wrestling with complex moral and social issues while trying to define their identities in their families, communities, and love. In the title story, Andra, working at her new job in South Florida, is exhausted trying to come up with an appropriate response to where she is "really" from. In "Torsion," Claudia fears for her own future after reluctantly agreeing to help her unstable but loving mother take her critically ill brother away from his foster parent. Morant's and Agosto's rich characterizations quickly provide intimate understandings of the cast of characters, an outstanding achievement in short story narration. They capture the characters' emotional turmoil while perfectly delivering McCauley's welcome touches of humor. VERDICT This is an exquisite marriage of writer and narrators. Every collection should include these brilliantly written stories that combine sharp social commentary with truly captivating characters.--Beth Farrell

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