I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the GO HOME by Terry Farish & Lochan Sharma Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Author: Terry Farish & Lochan Sharma

Pub. Date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Groundwood Books

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 304

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/GO-HOME-Farish-Sharma

In a world beset by anger and fear, what does it mean to protect one’s home and family?

Olive and Gabe ― her older brother’s best friend ― are deeply in love. They want nothing more than to make a home and family together, especially after the overdose death of Olive’s brother, Chris. It won’t be easy. Gabe works three jobs, and Olive still needs to finish high school, but their future together feels certain and right.

But when Samir Paudel moves into the house across the street, Olive’s and Gabe’s lives are disrupted. The Paudel house is overfull with family and friends, and they play loud music at all hours. Yet Olive is drawn to them, particularly to Samir’s little nephew, Bhim, and his grandfather, Hajurba.

Yet Samir’s very presence seems to awaken in Gabe an intense anger ― toward immigrants he believes are taking resources from White Americans ― resources that would have saved Chris and his own father, who has lost his job and is now struggling with ill health and alcoholism.

When Olive realizes that Gabe and his family are the source of escalating aggressions toward the Paudels, she no longer recognizes the loyal, loving boy she fell in love with.

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About Terry Farish:

TERRY FARISH is the author of The Good Braider (YALSA and SLJ Best Book for Young Adults), Either the Beginning or the End of the World (Maine Literary Award) and A Feast for Joseph (with OD Bonny and illustrated by Ken Daley). She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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LOCHAN SHARMA was born in Nepal. His family was registered at Timai refugee camp after they were exiled from Bhutan. Lochan and his family moved to the US in 2009 and now live in Concord, New Hampshire. He is a student at Keene State College. 

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Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of GO HOME, US Only.

Ends October 22nd, midnight EST.

Guest Post 1 The Power of the Horse  in the my novel  GO HOME

By Terry Farish

Hello Readers,

I’m delighted to be a guest and tell you a behind-the scenes story about writing GO HOME.  You invited me to write about this: “Please tell us about a favorite scene in the novel and why.”

I have a most-favorite scene. It begins with this backstory. Animals are very important to me.  My co-writer, Lochan Sharma, always wore a gold elephant on a gold chain around his neck. It was a Ganesha and represented learning. Lochan gave the Ganesha-on-a-chain to Samir the Nepali main character in GO HOME.

To Olive, the New Hampshire-born character, I gave a horse.  A real horse. I love animals. They are the world to me. I’ve given an animal in some guise to the main characters of all my books. 

When I was six, I adopted a cat.  He was a stray I named Alexander.  He turned out to be a she and became Alexandra.When I was seven, I got Val from a litter who needed a home.  I also had pollywogs in glass jars and waited for them to hatch. I had a little playhouse with a porch that used to be a chicken coop and kept the jars of polliwogs on the window ledge. 

But all I wanted was a horse.

That’s because my third grade teacher, Mrs. Slavin, every day, read us a chapter from THE BLACK STALLION. It was my favorite thing in the world that year of my life. I don’t remember the classroom or Mrs. Slavin’s face when she read.  The words went straight to my heart. 

Those scenes on the island when the boy, Alec, is befriending the wild and untouchable, terrified stallion gripped me as I saw Alec’s own desperation to connect with this wild being for their survival. That’s how it looked to my 8-year old self. 

And that’s when I wanted a wild and untouchable stallion to love the way Alec loved the Black

But I couldn’t have a horse because I lived on a really busy state highway.  When I was eleven, I did ride. I took riding lessons one day a week, and just like the way I lived for my teacher read to me, I lived for the day, I could ride that old horse.

In writing GO HOME, I wanted to give Olive something wild and powerful in her mind, possibly untouchable like the Black was to Alec.   In the novel, Olive teaches Lochan to swim and they have a quest to swim from the mainland to a small island in a cove. And on that island is a horse. To Olive, the white spotted horse on the island was that creature of power and mystery. Olive never imagined she would ride him.  It was the growing friendship between her and Samir, the boy from Nepal, that give her a small gasp of possibility.   Because if she rides him, she knew it would be like flying. She wanted to fly.

Olive had a love of reading because of the horse stories she’d read as a small girl, like I did. She gave the horse on the island a mystery and power that she also needed. Her personal quest became would she, given the chance, have the courage to ride the island horse?  

Thank you for reading.  I have a question for you.  Is there an animal you love and when your hold this animal close in your imagination, you feel your own sureness in the world? 

P.s. Here is a photo of horses on Belle Isle, NH, the real island that became a model for my fictional setting.