The eagerly anticipated second novel from the author of Broken for You - a national bestseller and selection of the Today Show Book Club - is a sweeping, gorgeously crafted family story set in the American heartland.

With her best-selling debut novel, Broken for You, Stephanie Kallos earned comparisons to John Irving, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields, establishing her as a writer of uncommon “wisdom and soulfulness” (Sue Monk Kidd).

Sing Them Home is a deeply moving portrait of three grown siblings who have lived in the shadow of unresolved grief since their mother’s mysterious disappearance when they were children. Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician’s wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope’s three young children, the stability of life with their distant, preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother’s spitfire best friend, is no match for their mother’s absence. Larken, the eldest, is an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the only son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable and whose profession, and all too much more, depend on his sculpted frame and ready smile; and Bonnie, the baby of the family is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs the roadsides for clues to her mother’s legacy, and permission to move on.

When, decades after their mother’s disappearance, they are summoned home after their father’s sudden death, they are forced to revisit the childhood tragedy at the center of their lives. With breathtaking lyricism, wisdom, and humor, Stephanie Kallos explores the consequences of protecting the ones we love.

Sing Them Home is a magnificent tapestry of lives connected and undone by tragedy, lives poised—unbeknownst to the characters themselves—for redemption.

Praise for Sing Them Home

• January 2009 Indie Next List, Shelf Awareness Pick of the Year

• Pacific Northwest Independent Booksellers Bestseller List

• A Heartland Independent Bestseller 2008

• A Canadian Bestseller (Globe and Mail #10 debut)

• “All Iowa Reads” selection

• Entertainment Weekly selection, Top Ten Books of 2009

“Sing Them Home is simply wonderful. It’s a welcome tonic to those of us who look back with great longing to Anne Tyler’s early novels . . . that is, those of us hungry for books with quirky, flawed, yet realistic and beloved characters who leap off the page into our arms and refuse to leave. I didn’t want Sing Them Home ever to end.” — Nancy Pearl, NPR commentator; author of Book Lust and George & Lizzie.

“Fans of Ann Patchett and Haven Kimmel should dive onto the sofa one wintry weekend with Stephanie Kallos’s wonderfully transportive second novel, Sing Them Home. . . . [A] keenly empathetic description of life in . . . . Emlyn Springs, one of those all-too-rare small towns in literature, rich in personality but mercifully free of broad, condescending cliché. . . . As the novel floats back and forth from past to present, Kallos patiently reveals the hurt and longing that’s pounding beneath the surface . . . [and] the ending may leave you feeling so wistful for these strange, sad people that you find yourself fantasizing about a trip to Nebraska.” -Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly

“Not since the Wizard of Oz has a tornado been used to such potent literary effect. . . . Dorothy may have thought that there’s no place like home, but what happens when there’s no house left at the old address, and no real parent figure to go home to? The Jones siblings take a further step down the road to enlightenment: They learn that home is where the heart is. . . . Kallos performs ample wizardry in blending both tears and quirky humor in this tale of lost souls.” -Barbara Lloyd McMichael, The Seattle Times

“With empathy and wit, Kallos weaves together the stories of the living and the dead, creating a world in which love trumps loss and faith can summon redemption. The result is a magical novel that even cynics will close with a smile.” -Michelle Green, People

“Brilliant . . . A richly textured, deeply satisfying, and enduring read—a whirlwind of aching sadness, secret histories, sex that’s by turns empty and angry and sloppy and transformative, moments of great sweetness and joy that are never saccharine, and ultimately, resolution and redemption that are well-earned and in no way false or forced. Before Sing Them Home, Kallos was already, arguably, the best first-novelist of the Aughts; now it’s abundantly clear that she’s becoming quite a bit more than that.” —Stephen Nathans-Kelly, First Look Books blog

“Sing Them Home has such a wonderful modern fairy tale feel to it, but instead of evil step-mothers and ogres and princesses, we get very real people (an overweight academic, sneaking food and disguising her torso; an exercise-addicted weatherman unable to move on from his adolescent romance; and a young woman, ever searching for a past she can't reclaim), all dealing with the mysterious disappearance of their mother, Hope Jones, who was swept up in a tornado and never seen again. It is Hope's voice, heard through her journals, that alternates with the struggles of her adult children, and weaves a story both magical and brutally realistic…I don't like to compare books with other books...but titles like Lovely Bones and Secret Life of Bees do come to mind. This is a wonderful book, and I know so many readers who will love it.” —Leslie Reiner, Inkwood Books (Tampa, FL)

“I have goosebumps. Yes, I have goosebumps just thinking of how much I loved to Sing Them Home. I can say with absolute certainty that Sing Them Home is the best book of 2009---maybe of the decade. Stephanie Kallos is an original, brilliant storyteller of the highest-ranking and I am in awe of her talent. Watch out Tyler, Irving and Russo, 'cause the competition has arrived. More, please!” —Sally Brewster, Park Road Books, (Charlotte, NC)