Like Alice Munro, Jean Thompson is best known for her well-crafted short stories. This episodic novel spans thirty years and a dozen members of an extended Iowa family in a series of linked stories. Thompson gradually and artfully pulls the threads together into a satisfying whole. This is an author who cares about her characters and her readers.

A great midwestern family story with less angst than Jonathan Franzen and more love and soul. Started a bit slow but great ending.

I really liked the writing style, but the story was boring and not much seemed to happen. I also had a hard time caring about any of the characters enough to see what happened to them, so I just quit.

Loved the book, couldn't put it down. Liked how each chapter was written focusing on a different character each time. Different spin on growing up in the midwest.

"Family Saga Jean Thompson's The Year We Left Home (Simon & Schuster) plumbs the American heart with rigor and intensity, seamlessly connecting one family's fortunes to those of the larger national community—from the aftermath of Vietnam through the farm crisis of the 1980s, into the tech boom and bust. Built from individual narratives that at first seem disconnected, the novel follows the four Erickson siblings of Iowa through marriages and deaths as well as smaller moments of alienation, loss, and maturity. Eventually, like the Ericksons, we come to realize that "no moment of life was like any other and as soon as you became aware of them, they were as good as gone." — Liza Nelson