Home Again 2020, the sequel to Jolt a rural noir and Two Close, is a historical novel which tells the story of Jason, Marty, and their mother, Mary Matters, on their return from Ohio to their home in Ariana. Right hemisphere brain injury has caused Lou Matters, the father, to suffer left side neglect and vision loss. As such, Lou will stay until Thanksgiving in Ohio on his sister-in-law’s farm where he will help with milking the cows. Family members there plan to monitor his safety as he navigates the house and barn areas. For Mary and the boys, returning home requires an adjustment to Lou’s absence as well as challenges to settling back into home and school after the boys’ year on the road during which they had fled to avoid the potential for radiation contamination after the Magdum Heights nuclear plant meltdown. The first semester of the 2018-2019 school year brings them academic challenges. Marty establishes a warm friendship with Carl, a black peer who is new to the school. And Marty’s interest in producing Tic Toc music and dance videos blossoms into making them with his brother Jason and their neighbor’s son, Ricky, who is a year younger than Jason. In time, they also involve Carl.
As for Mary, she has returned to her position in Aesopolis as a licensed school-based speech-language pathologist working with autism spectrum and emotionally disturbed students in a public school setting. For her it is business as usual. At Thanksgiving, Lou comes home to study and rehabilitate with the intent to become a web designer as he is no longer safe to serve as a power plant engineer. By the end of the first semester of the 2019-2020 school year, the boys’ lives settle into a comfortable rhythm, but a year later in January 2020, COVID-19 rears its ugly head. The effects of COVID-19 and its accompanying stay-at-home order impacts the family deeply only to be complicated by the emergence of a Black Lives Matter movement which impassions Marty to involve everyone.
Home Again 2020 is the story of the every day life of an American middle class family caught in a prolonged situation in which they must constantly seek new answers, first in settling into life as it had become given Lou Matters’ need to rehabilitate and his sons need to settle back into school after a year of hit and miss education on the road and then all having to incorporate a new awareness of COVID-19 and the importance of isolation, mask-wearing, and social distancing while developing a increased awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement. It becomes the year 2020, a year in which climate change, political and social upheaval rock the country.
