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Home Safe
Elizabeth Berg, 2009
Random House
272 pp.

In Brief
Beloved author Elizabeth Berg tells the story of the recently widowed Helen Ames and of her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa. Helen is shocked to discover that her mild-mannered and loyal husband had been leading a double life. The Ames’s had saved money for a happy retirement, planned in minute detail, but that money has disappeared in several big withdrawals—spent by Helen’s husband before he died. What could he possibly have been doing? And what is Helen to do now? Why does Helen’s daughter object to her mother’s applying for a job—and why doesn’t Tessa meet a nice man and get married?

What Helen’s husband did with all their money turns out to be provocative, revelatory—and leads Helen and her daughter to embark on new adventures, and change. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—December 2, 1948
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—A.A.S, St. Mary’s College, A.A.S
• Awards— ALA Best Books of the Year for Durable Goods and
  Joy School
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois


Elizabeth Berg made her mark as a promising writer with the publication of her first novel, Durable Goods (1993), the story of Katie, a 12-year-old girl reeling from her mother's death while her abusive father drags her from town to town. The book, like Katie, was tough but tender, and the American Library Association named it a Best Book of the Year.

Since then, Berg has written subsequent novels, most of them, like Durable Goods, sincere, unpretentious, somewhat sentimental, and focused on an event that changes a woman's life. In Joy School (1997), a continuation of Katie's story, the crucible is her first taste of romance; in What We Keep (1998), it's a girl's abandonment by her mother; in Until the Real Thing Comes Along (1999), it's a woman's love for a gay man. All are grounded in the realistic minutiae of family life: irksome marriages, tempestuous parent-child relationships, love, betrayal, and resolution.

Although her books have received mixed reviews from critics, Berg remains immensely popular with readers who appreciate her fine powers of observation and honest descriptions. Her command of authentic details is on best display in her medically-themed titles. Before she became a full-time writer, Berg was a registered nurse, where she accumulated an endless store of observations related to sickness, healing, and the emotional toll that health crises take on people. In Range of Motion, Berg wrote about the experience of a comatose man; in Talk Before Sleep, about a nurse caring for a good friend who is succumbing to cancer; in Never Change, about a nurse treating an incurably ill man who also happens to have been a childhood acquaintance.

Although Berg's plots can occasionally be predictable, equally predictable is her taut, intelligent foray into the forces that shape ordinary people's lives -- especially women's lives -- and her exploration of the infinite resilience of the human spirit.

Extras

• Berg had an experience she used for the straight-gay relationship in Until the Real Thing Comes Along: Her college love later came out to her after the two had broken up. The character of Ethan is modeled on that college boyfriend.

• Berg hasn't managed to get her way when it comes to titling her books, usually getting overruled by her agent and editor. She wanted to call Durable Goods The King of Wands, after a tarot card; Range of Motion would have been Telling Songs; and Open House would have been The Hotel Meatloaf. Perhaps Berg should be thankful for her handlers?

• Durable Goods was never meant to have a sequel, Berg says in a publisher's interview, but she ended up writing Joy School (and later True to Form) because she missed the original characters. Berg explains: "There was just a time when I was lying in the bathtub, and I thought about Katie, and I got out of the bathtub and started writing about her to see what she was up to." (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Critics Say. . .
Love, work and the absence of both figure prominently in Berg's latest, a rumination on loss and replenishment. Since novelist Helen's husband, Dan, died a year ago, she's been unable to write, and though her publisher and agent aren't worried, she is, particularly after a disastrous performance at a public speaking engagement leaves her wondering if her writing career will be another permanent loss. Meanwhile, daughter Tessa is getting impatient as Helen smothers her with awkward motherly affection. Tessa longs for distance and some independence, but Helen is unable to run her suburban Chicago home without continually calling on Tessa to perform the handyman chores that once belonged to Dan. And then Helen discovers Dan had withdrawn a huge chunk of their retirement money, and Helen's quest to find out what happened turns into a journey of self-discovery and hard-won healing. Berg gracefully renders, in tragic and comic detail, the notions that every life-however blessed-has its share of awful loss, and that even crushed, defeated hearts can be revived.
Publishers Weekly


Eleven months after her husband's sudden death, Helen Ames remains helpless about home repair, ignorant of finances, and stymied by writer's block. Lonely and unsuited to any job outside the home, Helen has nothing to do but exasperate her adult daughter, Tessa, by intruding, until the family accountant calls asking about a secret withdrawal of $850,000 her husband made before dying. The mystery is quickly resolved, but in the meantime, Helen reluctantly agrees to lead an adult writing workshop for pay. The story then proceeds comfortably through Helen's coming to terms with her husband's surprise, her daughter's well-meaning withdrawal, and Helen's journey of self-discovery-with the help of her students-outside of her roles as wife, mother, writer. Prolific novelist Berg (The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted) is an accomplished master of women's fiction. Her warmth, humor, and forgiving eye for human nature, mixing wry observation with heartwarming moments, make this a pleasant read. Recommended for popular fiction collections.
Laurie A. Cavanaugh - Library Journal


Berg is a tender and enchanting storyteller who wisely celebrates the simple, sustaining elements of life, from comfort food to birdsong to a good laugh. A keen and funny observer, she is the poet of kindness. And not only is this an insightful, graceful, and romantic novel of one charmingly contradictory woman’s path through grief, it is also a paean to the profound pleasures and revelations of reading and the adventure and catharsis of writing. Books, Berg affirms in her magical way, are a unifying force for good in the cosmos.
Booklist


Widow discovers an $850,000 crack in her nest egg in Berg's latest (The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, 2008, etc.). Helen, a bestselling author living in Chicago, is experiencing writer's block for the first time in her life. And no wonder: Her husband Dan died of a heart attack at the breakfast table. Her elderly father has cancer. Phobic about money matters, she's been dodging increasingly frantic calls from her accountant, Steve, and has toyed with taking holiday employment at Anthropologie, even going so far as to interview. A library program director is hounding her to teach a writer's workshop. Toxic fan mail from wannabe writer Margot attacks Helen's body of work as "insipid," "mawkish" and an insult to literature. When Steve finally reaches Helen it's to ask if she has any idea what her husband did with the 850 large he withdrew from the couple's retirement account before his death. Helen had preferred to let Dan handle all the finances, but she had no reason not to trust him. After some promising setups (At 59, would Helen be Anthropologie's oldest cashier? Was squeaky-clean Dan leading a double life?) Berg seems to fall back on her default worldview: Her characters are simply too nice, too timid or both, to get themselves into any interesting messes. Helen sabotages the job interview, and she learns early on (from well-preserved hunky architect Tom) that Dan siphoned off the funds to surprise Helen with the California retirement house of her dreams. The writing class adds the most spice-Helen's arch-rival, a catty novelist, is a co-instructor, and arch-rival-in training Margot brings a masterpiece to the workshop. Otherwise, stock minor players-Helen's skeptical daughter, Tessa,her wise-cracking best girlfriend, Midge, and Tom, a hot romantic prospect (and he's handy too!)-and a plot that ducks every conflict render this outing listless. Neither insipid nor mawkish but definitely phoned-in.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions

1. In the opening pages of Home Safe, we see Helen as a young girl, writing poetry to deal with the grief of losing a classmate: “With this, she was given peace” (page 4). What types of activities calm or fulfill you? How do they resonate emotionally?

2. Helen says that her favorite Christmas gift is the custom-mixed CD her daughter makes for her each year. Do you have a tradition of making homemade gifts? What have been some of your favorite or most memorable holiday gifts? What gift would you be thrilled to get from your child? From your parent?

3. As a diversion, Helen prepares an elaborate meal of “roast pork with cinnamon apple chutney, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans with crispy shallots,” and an apple crisp (page 26). If you were making such a meal just for yourself, what foods would you choose? What roles does food play in our lives? What types of situations and occasions do you associate with special meals? Discuss other creative pursuits that you might have or indeed have tried in a similar situation.

4. One writing exercise Helen uses as a teaching tool is for her students to write short stories using a number of given objects: “an old silver hairbrush, a blackened frying pan, a love letter from the 1930s, a pair of men’s shoes, a floppy-necked teddy bear, one dusty wing of a butterfly” (page 47). What sort of story might you construct about these objects? Who do these things belong to? If you had created this exercise, what objects might you have chosen?

5. Helen relates, on page 89, that Dan used a children’s book to illustrate his dream of sailing. Are there any particular children’s books that resonate with you as an adult? That influence you? Why?

6. The title’s title, Home Safe, appears in an expression Helen recalls on page 86. How did Helen and Dan use this phrase? What people or places in your life give you this feeling?

7. Helen wonders what she and Dan might have discussed in the tree house, recalling that a friend had wisely said,“It’s not the things you have in a tree house, it’s the things you think about there” (page 129). If you could have a special retreat of your own, what and where would it be, and why? What sorts of things would you discuss there, and with whom

8. When Helen considers moving to San Francisco, knowing that Tessa has accepted a job there, she wonders if Tessa will be upset about it, and asks herself if she “is allowed to make a decision that is for and about herself?” (page182). This question of whether an action is for Tessa or for Helen recurs throughout the novel. From where does this question stem? How does this issue affect their relationship? How would you advise each party? Do you know a mother-daughter pair, or a female pair with a different bond, who disagrees on such issues?

9. Helen thinks that “if you leave one home, you can find another” (page 202). Who or what makes a home? What qualities do you associate with home? Have you found Helen’s thought to be true in your own life?

10. The details and features of Helen’s dream house are carefully and delightfully described. What might your dream house look like? What features would it include? Where would it be located?

11. What parts of Helen’s journey are universal? What parts can you relate to your own life? What themes does Elizabeth Berg draw out of the characters?

12. The lush and detailed images in this novel are unique. Can you point out a few effective images that really conveyed the novel’s themes to you? What images did you most relate and respond to?
(Questions issued by publisher.)