Long Gone, Come Home (PB) (2023)

Spanning from the joyous peak of the 1930s jazz era to the Great Depression and civil rights movement, Long Gone, Come Home weaves a poetic tale of love, life, and loss as one woman learns the true meaning of home.

Birdie Jennings dreams of a big life beyond her small town of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, beyond her mundane job tying tobacco leaves at Wrights Factory, beyond her position as the baby of the family. Her life changes when she meets Jimmy Walker, a smooth talker and dreamer. Jimmy makes big promises of a magical life filled with poetry, passion, and music, and Birdie is quickly swept off her feet. But some short years after they marry, Jimmy leaves for work and never returns, and Birdie is left behind with two toddlers and no explanation for her husband's latest disappearance. With no support system, Birdie moves back home with her overbearing mother.

Just as she's settling into her new life, Birdie witnesses a gruesome murder and flees Mt. Sterling to avoid questioning. For the first time, Birdie is truly on her own. She travels to the big cities of Cincinnati and Chicago just as she dreamed, but with a new goal: find Jimmy and bring him home. Along the way, Birdie explores the bustling jazz scenes in the hottest nightclubs and backwoods juke joints. Finding her place among criminals and saints is tough, but Birdie is tougher, and she soon wonders if an independent life on her own terms is the better way forward.