Does anyone remember Emma Hooper’s Etta and Otto and Russell and James? Oh, I loved it. I was so thrilled to see her new novel – out mid-August – that I moved it clear to the top of my stack.

Our Homesick Songs reminded me of The Rathbones and also a little bit of The Light Between Oceans. It’s set in a small fishing village called Big Running that once was flooded with fish but has now run dry. The fish shortage has sent all of the town’s inhabitants away to find work; the town has slowly dwindled down to only 6 occupied houses among the dozens of deserted ones. In one home lives the Connor family – Martha and Aidan and their children Cora and Finn. In alternating chapters we get the story of Martha and Aidan’s courtship and the story of their present.

The Connors are all cheats; it’s widely known throughout the village and even to young Aidan himself. He vows never to fall in love. Sequestering himself out at sea, he sings to the fish all night long. His voice travels far over the water, to the other shore, where young Martha Murphy finds it and believes it to be the voice of a mermaid. She listens night after night and when she finally meets him, she knows he is the one just as she knows that all Connors are cheats. Fast-forward 20 years, the members of the Connor family are each struggling in their own ways to come to terms with the dissolution of their town, their family, their lives.

What I love about Emma Hooper are the little details that make her stories magic – Cora, sneaking into abandoned houses and redecorating them according to different nationalities (an Italian house, a Mexican house, etc.); Finn, trying his best to lure the fish back according to any old folklore he comes across; Martha with her finely knotted fishing nets. This is a slow novel, but a beautiful one.

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper (Simon & Schuster | 9781501124488 | August 14, 2018)

Have you ever thought about what you would think about if you knew you were dying? If you knew you were dying soon? If you are curious as to what it would be like, just read The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea.

Big Angel is the patriarch of a large, loud, opinionated Mexican (Mexican-AMERICAN thanks to Big Angel) family. And he’s dying. Soon. So he does what the patriarch of any big family would do – he decides to throw himself the biggest birthday bash ever seen. He invites all of his crazy relatives – his siblings, estranged children, everybody’s sister and child, grandchild and niece.

As with any family, Big Angel’s has its share of drama. There are feuds, brawls, tears, and laughs, tons of family stories to be told.  I loved that part. But what I loved most was Big Angel himself; reflecting on his life and coming to terms with his imminent departure from the world he has known and loved. There was something so real, so honest, in his fears and sorrows. I loved the way he talked about his memory, especially the memories of meeting his wife as a young man, of falling in love and then staying in a marriage, more or less in love. It’s the perfect novel for anyone who loves a large cast of colorful characters, a great family saga, or stories about crossing borders and building new lives.

Big Angel is definitely not perfect, but he felt very, very real.

House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea (Little Brown & Company | 9780316154888 | March 6, 2018)