Hope House, Joe Bond’s debut novel, dares to wish for more than the world can offer to the “troubled boys” at its center. The boys – AWOL who runs away, Karvel who’s in charge, and Damico who just had a child – are limping towards adulthood and the five phases needed to graduate from their treatment home in 1980s Kentucky. Together their interweaving narratives paint a picture of a home that is on the verge of closing, a father who would sacrifice everything for his court-ordered sons, and a world where hope can be written on the nametag of a fast food uniform.
Joe Bond grew up in these places and gives them an earnestness that no other writer could. He can make a story turn in one five-letter sentence, revealing a morsel of information that demolishes what you previously thought about a character, a situation, a worldview.
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