Welcome Home

A compilation of sketches, photographs, and letters from one of the twentieth century's most respected storytellers.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Before Lucia Berlin died, she was working on a book of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches called Welcome Home. The work consisted of more than twenty chapters that started in 1936 in Alaska and ended (prematurely) in 1966 in southern Mexico. In this edition, her son Jeff Berlin is filling in the gaps with photos and letters from her eventful, romantic, and tragic life.

From Alaska to Argentina, Kentucky to Mexico, New York City to Chile, Berlin's world was wide. And the writing here is, as we've come to expect, dazzling. She describes the places she lived and the people she knew with all the style and wit and heart and humor that readers fell in love with in her stories. Combined with letters from and photos of friends and lovers, Welcome Home is an essential nonfiction companion to A Manual for Cleaning Women and Evening in Paradise.

“As the case with her fiction, Berlin's pieces here are as faceted as the brightest diamond.” —NYLON

“An illuminating portrait of the artist and an insight into Berlin's documentary fiction . . . [Berlin] evokes the people and places that shaped her . . . She writes candidly about what she enjoyed and endured; when her narrative peters out in mid-sentence, she leaves her reader wanting more.” —The Economist

“These crisp vignettes are appetizers for the real meal. Raw, passionate, and delightfully unfiltered.” —Los Angeles Review of Books