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  • Published: 17 April 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529918113
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00

The Homemade God





Set against the wild backdrop of an intense heatwave in Europe, this is a story about siblings relationships - what holds a family together and what might fracture it forever.

'We’ve lived charmed lives, all of us, because of our father. And yet we don’t know how to be anything. We don’t even know how to live ordinary lives. We don’t have the tools. It’s as if we expect greatness because our father was great. But we are not. It’s no wonder Bella Mae hates us.’

There is a heatwave across Europe. Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece; now he is dead. There is no sign of his new wife Bella Mae, no sign of his will, and no sign of a painting.
Always close, all that the siblings come to understand that summer, about themselves, their father and their new stepmother will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.

  • Published: 17 April 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529918113
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00

About the author

Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop and a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Her books have been translated into thirty-six languages and two are in development for film.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards ‘New Writer of the Year’ in December 2012 and shortlisted for the ‘UK Author of the Year’ 2014.

Rachel has also written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4, including all the Bronte novels. She moved to writing after a long career as an actor, performing leading roles for the RSC, the National Theatre and Cheek by Jowl.

She lives with her family in Gloucestershire.

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