Taking Lottie Home

This was my first Terry Kay novel and now I am going to run, not walk, to my Library in hopes that it will have all the rest of his works. I will not waste space summarizing the story as other reviewers have done a super job but I do want to say that there is something wrong with Oprah's opinion if she or whoever selects her book of the month if this one isn't selected in the very near future. I have read most of "her" selections and this is better than many of them. Another good one for those who like Southern settings is Home Across the Road by Nancy Peacock.I really hated for this one to end and would love a sequel based on what really happened to Lottie and her life after this one.Mr. Kay, where have you been all my life?????

The first book I read by Terry Kay was Shadow Song followed by To Dance with the White Dog which also became a wonderful television production a few years ago. Now with his latest book, Taking Lottie Home, Mr. Kay capitaves his reading audience with a sentimental tale which not only evokes a different era but wholesome and well meaning characters with the very best of values. On a train home, two men recently discharged from a minor baseball team meet Lottie, a young woman with a questionable past. Ben returns home to his mother while Foster marries Lottie and they have a son and a good marraige. When Foster dies, though, it wa shis wish that Ben accompany Lottie home to her family to continue raising their son. But Lotties family and home life isn't conducive to raising a child so she returns to Ben's hometown where she spends time living with Ben's mother and also meets Ben's future father-in-law. And in a stunning turn of events, Lottie leaves these people who truly care about her but not before she also leaves a part of herself with them.This is a wonderful book which will intoduce you to some fine characters you would be proud to call friends if they lived in your town.Enjoy!!!!

I just finished "Taking Lottie Home." While reading the book, I kept thinking that it was a good book but not a great book. Then I read the epilogue. At that point, the book became the great book. When a writer can write and make his reader feel the joy and pain of life as it really is, then he has risen to the top of the craft. He becomes like Hemingway or Steinbeck. Terry Kay has done that with "Taking Lottie Home." As I read this book I hurt and I laughed. And when I finished it, I was affected. Terry Kay wrote in the front of my book (I bought it at a book signing) that he hoped that the story mattered. Mr. Kay, the story mattered. Thanks.

Seldom, if ever, has a character captured and held me as Lottie Lanier did in this book. Not a common person, but both simple and complex, dull and interesting. Terry Kay has managed allow the reader to follow and care about her journey home and to grieve and worry about the end. I laid the book aside for almost two weeks for two reasons: First, I didn't want the words to end, and second, I couldn't possibly see how it could end well. It is a wonderful and unusual love story as only Terry Kay can write.

Terry Kay may be best known for his wonderful novel, TO DANCE WITH THE WHITE DOG, but he outdoes himself in this spellbinding tale of love lost and found at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel is so rich in characters and plot that it would be difficult to summarize either without falling short of the dimensions he's created on both counts. In Lottie Lanier, he has discovered a girl/woman for the ages, a character at times so simple, yet at others, complex, mysterious, and so downright appealing, you literally feel like she's in the room beside you as you continue reading. For anyone who has ever been in or out of love at any time in one's life, TAKING LOTTIE HOME is one novel you will read, cherish, and most importantly, never forget. Cry, laugh, cheer, but do not miss this one!