News Release

Hawthorne Books Releases Debut Novel, Call Me Home, by Megan Kruse with an introduction by Elizabeth Gilbert

For immediate release 14 Oct 2014

Contact: 503-327-8849 rhughes@hawthornebooks.com |

5 Under 35 Winner: National Book Foundation
2015 Rainbow Award: Gay Contemporary Fiction
Best Books of 2015: San Francisco Chronicle
A Year In Queer Reading: Garth Greenwell’s Favorite LGBT Books of 2015
2016 Book Award Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

“A powerful debut novel told with ferocity and grace.” STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly
“Megan Kruse’s first novel startles in its capacity for complexity, showing not only the tempestuous nature of family love, but also the near-impossible task of breaking free of it…” The San Francisco Chronicle


Megan Kruse’s debut novel has the support of Elizabeth Gilbert who writes, “Megan Kruse is a young writer of raw and fearless talent…” and Jess Walter,who says, Call Me Home is an uncommonly powerful debut novel.” This is a novel that has an epic scope in the tradition of Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves or Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and braids the stories of a family in three distinct voices: Amy and her children, Jackson, who is gay and coming of age, and younger sister, Lydia.  At its heart, this is a story about family, our choices and how we come to live with them, what it means to be queer in the rural West, and the changing idea of home.

Megan Kruse lives in Seattle.

Hawthorne Books
3636 NE 45th Avenue, Portland, OR 97213
503-481-1632

Hawthorne Books is distributed by PGW (800-788-3213 / www.pgw.com).