AshehougAgency

Homecoming

”A girl with a kid on her hip walks slowly up the gangway. She has a rosy kerchief on her head, maybe that’s why Emilie notices her. The colours are screaming freshly among all the worn and pale: the girl’s own windbreaker, the kid’s woolly sweater, the clothes of the lads and lasses pushing forward behind her. The lads have caps and tangled jumpers, the women have grey coats which might have been green, blue or brown when they were new. The girl is pushed forward by all the people who can’t get on board the express coastal steamer quickly enough. Because now they’re going home, finally, to Bosekop and Skaidi, to Mehamn and Berlevåg, to Kiberg and Neiden, to the places they were driven from that black autumn barely two years ago.”
It is the summer of 1946. Emilie from Oslo travels to Finnmark, as a volunteer with the Peace Friends, where she meets the Brit Jack Travis. Together they assume the task of running a transition home for Lebensborn-children who are to be reunited with their Norwegian mothers or be adopted.
Kjersti Ericsson has written a gripping novel about a difficult chapter in our post-war history. The many children’s destinies that appear in this book are described with great empathy.

Praise for Homecoming:

”Sensitive description of how the so-called Lebensborn-children were fetched from Germany and received in Norway after the war… The story which is told, is important to be reminded of”
(Adresseavisen)

”Sober and insightful about neglected children. Kjersti Ericsson has written a powerful book… It has turned out a gripping story”
(Haugesunds Avis)

”Insightful about children marked by war… With insight and quiet wisdom she tells a story of individual destinies, fetched from the depths of war and brought to life in a language which is both scant and spacious. To write a novel about this many troublesome child-destinies is a daring project, to go through with it without slipping into sentimentality is skilful. Ericsson captures the unique post-war atmosphere, simply by not painting with a wide, epic paintbrush”
(Stavanger Aftenblad)

”Well-written about a stain on Norwegian history… Kjersti Ericsson, criminologist and author of both non-fiction, poetry and fiction, writes well and engaged. The reader is often encountered with heartbreaking destinies, idealistic people with unwavering spirits and bureaucratic authorities…Kjersti Ericsson’s novel might as well be read as a documentary about the return of the “German-children””
(Bergens Tidende)

”It is sore. It is naked and it is difficult. Kjersti Ericsson captures you into a world we would like to forget ever existed… Either way it is very sore and moving to read about these children, who we all know have suffered undeserved destinies because their mother was unfortunate enough to fall in love with a German man. This reality, this Norwegian past, is something we all need be reminded of. Homecoming does exactly that”
(Trønder-Avisa)

First published: 2005, Forlaget Oktober
Kjersti Ericsson: Biography and bibliography

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