YOUR RIGHTFUL HOME
Your Rightful Home: a novella from Nouvella Books
the book…
Lydia was your neighbor, the childhood friend you spent all your time with. Then a lie sends Lydia running out of your front door, after which she disappears. In Your Rightful Home we follow the life of a woman from childhood to adulthood and her struggle to discover who she is in the light of a tragedy she feels she may have caused. Are the formative powers of loss insurmountable? Can a single indiscretion define a person’s entire life?
praise…
“Your Rightful Home starts as a vivid, lighthearted snapshot of childhood and unfolds with an economy so bright and effortless that in the end I was startled to find that I’d been considering deep and elegant ideas about complicity, parenthood and nostalgia all along. In her debut, Alyssa Knickerbocker proves herself to be a blazing new talent with a wry, generous, and achingly precise voice. I’m so delighted to have read the first book by this wonderful writer, and I’m sure I’ll be a fan of hers for life.”
– Lauren Groff, author of The Monster’s of Templeton and Delicate Edible Birds
“Through a clear-eyed rendering of a childhood friendship and its tragic aftermath, Alyssa Knickerbocker’s YRH brilliantly suggests that betrayal is the rocket that launches our lives and even as our trajectories inevitably flatten, sadden and come full circle, the sense of guilt and loss burns on. Told in smooth prose shot through with iridescent observations, Knickerbocker’s generously plotted but unflinching novella provides a profound look into what we all must be carrying. This is a fearless and moving piece of work by a writer who herself is headed sky high.”
– Andrew Mozina, author of The Women Were Leaving the Men
press & reviews…
“The elegant precision with which Knickerbocker builds her concrete and simple imagery belies the metaphorical weight each image carries to pull the narrator under until all she can do to fight for breath is tell the story of Lydia’s disappearance…a moving and elegant exploration of the ways in which we slowly lose control, despite our best efforts.”
– Peter Grandbois; Summer 2010; Raintaxi
“Over the course of its seventy-odd pages, it hones in on a central question: to what extent are we defined throughout our lives by actions we took before we knew the consequences? And the answers it raises, through cycles and decisions good and bad, are thoroughly heartbreaking.”
– Tobias Carroll; December 2010; Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Your Rightful Home is a remarkably well-crafted story, told in such an honest and insightful voice that it stuck with me and compelled me to keep pretending long after I put it down.”
– Nicole McFeely; February 2011; Litseen
alyssa knickerbocker 