a novel by Wesley J. Wildman
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From Wildhouse Fiction, September 15, 2023
“Side by side we watch this new summer day blossom into beauty even as it leads us through the stations of agony. We know the rhythm so well but familiarity and repetition never mute the pain. Not even love mutes this pain. But love has surely transformed us, the sorry souls who live in pain.”
— The Winding Way Home
A moving story with rare spiritual depth
When disaster strikes Jesse and Alexandra’s family, their lives shatter. Jesse’s grief triggers a full-blown psychiatric crisis, which spurs a most unusual spiritual quest in an attempt to find a way to feel at home in what suddenly seems like a cruel world. In the midst of her own trauma, Alexandra is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, further pitching the family into desperation. Jesse’s weekly breakfast with two of his children, along with Alexandra’s determined efforts to fight the erasure of her memories, holds the family together despite the agonizing uncertainty surrounding all of them. Jesse and Alexandra find themselves drawn into the horrifying world of missing and abducted children and the minds of their captors, and eventually adopt an abduction survivor named Maddy and her young children. Together, they forge a new and expanded family, and create a home where everyone can heal. This is a family saga, a love story, an account of child abduction and its exacting aftermath, a tale of hard-won hope, and a profound exploration of the spiritual potential of ordinary life in the face of the unthinkable.
Praise for The Winding Way Home
As a one-time English professor, having absorbed countless works of fiction, I have never read a novel more devastating nor more beautiful.
— Patricia Browne
Former Professor of English, St. Catherine’s University, St. Paul, Minnesota
Disturbing, inspiring, daring, heartwarming, this is a novel of family, of terrible events, of deep and patient love (the erotic is not neglected), and of ultimate experiences and mysteries. The prose is engaging, the storytelling deft and resourceful, the vision of life opening into a larger vision of Being itself.
— Brian Jorgensen
Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Boston University
The Winding Way Home is a story about constructing meaning after unspeakable evil renders reality absurd, about the power of love to transfigure traumas that are beyond the reach of healing, and, ultimately, about the immense beauty, unspeakable wonder, and infinite spiritual vitality of everyday life. Providing a searing vision of the depth dimension of human existence shorn of all supernatural obfuscations, it's a must read, especially for the spiritual but not religious crowd.
— David Rohr
Center for Mind and Culture, Boston
Wildman creates an engrossing multigenerational narrative of present-day America that resonates with East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude. He also brings to us the mind and heart of Jesse, a quintessential religious naturalist, who creates a fascinating version of reality.
— Ursula Goodenough
President, Religious Naturalist Association and Professor of Biology Emerita, Washington University in St. Louis
This is a novel I can heartily recommend. It is contains profound insights about the sometimes extremely weird workings of the mind, shocking struggles with monstrous evil, the challenges of family relationships, the maturation processes of children with different characters and backgrounds, and, most of all, the healing power of human love. Wildman’s characters are sharply drawn and engagingly different. Their complicated interactions with one another constitute the unifying theme of the novel. The novel is evocatively religious in its sensibilities without references to anything supernatural. It poses haunting questions and tentative answers to these questions, each of which merits serious reflection.
— Donald A. Crosby
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Colorado State University
In this hauntingly beautiful novel, Wildman demonstrates that even the most heinous tragedy can be transformed through the alchemy of agape love. The Winding Way Home wilds mysticism and metaphysics to explore the intricacies of the mind, overcoming unspeakable trauma, relatable familial struggles, the bondage and freedom of death, and the resilience of the human spirit. It is an enthralling journey.
— Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling
In The Winding Way Home, Wesley Wildman integrates his theological background with the life concerns that confront human beings daily. The story raises questions about what does and does not have priority in individuals’ and families’ lives, whether there is anything that impacts those lives from beyond day-to-day contexts, and how to connect with a loved one now absent or deceased. The family dynamics include both traditional and non-traditional settings, with happy and struggling relationships, personal growth and change, experiences of connecting beyond the visible to the invisible. I found myself pondering what is (or is not) real and how the Holy might (or might not) impact my experiences and those of others. I strongly encourage others to immerse themselves in the story as well as in the spoken and unspoken questions raised in it.
— Bishop Susan Hassinger
The Winding Way Home is traumatic, transcendent, and exhilarating. Through a cornucopia of characters, arresting themes, and captivating plotlines, Wildman explores the duality of joy and sorrow and the meaning of life. In less capable hands, the darkness might obscure the graceful beauty that emerges from the lives of ordinary people. There is nothing cheap about this grace. Rather, there is an affirmative spirituality in the face of the awful things that fate brings our way.
— William David Hart
Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Religious Studies, Macalester College
TS Eliot wrote that 'humankind cannot bear very much reality'. This sophisticated and searching novel is about just that - bearing reality, in the face of almost unimaginable trauma. Skillfully chronicled, it also breaks innovative ground in understanding the human imagination. Warmly recommended.
— Christopher Southgate
Professor of Theodicy, Exeter University
The Winding Way Home is a captivating novel in which Wildman draws on various religious, philosophical, and scientific perspectives at strategic points in a well-crafted, human-interest story dealing with heartbreak and hope. Realistic, complex characters create a warm patchwork quilt – many personalities, talents, and challenges pieced together with strong relational threads throughout the story. The narrative moves at a comfortable pace with authentic dialogue appropriate to the situation, which richly contributes to the plot, to character development, or to psychological insights. Wildman conveys tragedy and its emotional aftermath with sensitivity, often reflecting the turmoil and spiritual struggles within his characters’ psyches. The novel’s multifaceted layers of misfortune, frustration, and resilience make it an ideal book club selection.
— Joyce Ann Konigsburg
Department of Religious Studies, DePaul University
The Winding Way Home is an astounding and achingly beautiful story about what love can do—the enduring love of an ordinary family searching for healing in the face of unspeakable tragedy, the fierce love of an extraordinary mother protecting her children from monstrous evil, and the mystical love of a less-than-ordinary sannyasi learning to see, accept, and even worship the world as it is most truly, intensely, profoundly. The novel is a slice of life that opens out onto reality as a whole, reality in all its wonder and possibility, complexity and depth, wildness and ambiguity, grace and horror. As readers, we are invited to taste the bliss of surrender and given a glimpse into a strange but adventurous spirituality, a spirituality of suchness, a spirituality that reveres—yes, loves—what is, without the illusory comforts of supernatural fictions. Wildman’s courageous novel belongs on the shelf of anyone who has become disillusioned with traditional religious “answers” to the problem of suffering or has tried to find meaning, hope, and authentic spiritual sustenance in the midst of trauma and unredeemable loss. In the closing words of the luminous protagonist, “Love conquers nothing but it changes everything.”
— Demian Wheeler
Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology and Religious Studies, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
The Winding Way Home is a multilayered, page-turner of a novel about a family living, loving, and learning to be human in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy. The story focuses on the father's spiritual attempt to join devotion to his daughter's memory with loyalty to the moral complexity of a world saturated with value but shorn of the supernatural. The novel shows us how one man strives to live meaningfully in the world as it is, rather than as he would like it to be, and in so doing, how he learns to revere its staggering beauty and goodness along with its pain, loss, and violence.
— Michael S. Hogue
Author of American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World
The Winding Way Home offers a different kind of answer to, or perhaps an exploration of, the age-old question of how people make sense of their suffering. In addition to a compelling story about how an extended family deals with the aftermath of heinous crimes, the novel explores questions of theology, spiritual technology, and the sometimes fuzzy lines between madness and genius. Wesley Wildman brings his formidable and edgy thinking about religion and spirituality into the form of a novel for everyone to encounter.
— Daniel J. Ott
Dean of the School of Theology, Humanities and Performing Arts at Eastern Mennonite University
News about the Book
September 26, 2023 – BU Today published an interview with Wesley, focusing on the challenges he faced when transitioning from technical nonfiction to writing fiction. The interview also gives some insight into why Wesley decided to write fiction in the first place, and why he wrote this particular book. It even includes some clues about the next three novels in the pipeline, in case you’re hungry for more.
Reader Responses
I loved this book; I connected with it in so many ways. It penetrated deeply into my emotions and my psyche, and the story is absolutely riveting. The characterization is outstanding. ALL of the characters are totally believable. I loved these people and shed many a tear as I read. I identified with so much of the Jesse/Alexandra love relationship and the raising of their family. Most astounding were the characterizations of Maddy and Michael, who survive the most horrendous circumstances with enormous impact on their lives. Wildman’s insight is nothing less than amazing. As to the primary themes of the novel, there was much I connected with. There was my lifelong obsession with Hermann Hesse, especially Siddhartha (similar to Jesse, Siddhartha discovers the eternal now, the presence of all things simultaneously, the acceptance of the world in all its totality, good and bad, as he looks into the river, and the peace and bliss he experiences as a result). Though I have never achieved the exalted state Siddhartha and Jesse achieve, I have had enough personal experience (Zen studies, transcendental meditation, and more) to believe totally in that vision. This is a very important book that I rank up there with the best books I have ever read. It is not just for theologians and philosophers; it should get out there to a large readership. If I were still teaching, I wouldn’t hesitate to assign it and recommend it to students, especially those living in difficult situations. This book could have a significant impact on anyone’s life. It IS for everyone.
— Robert Wheeler, Whiting, New Jersey
Department of English, Howell High School, New Jersey (Retired)
Department of Humanities, Ocean County College, New Jersey (Retired)
Department of Humanities, Ocean County College, New Jersey (Retired)
If I had to choose one word to describe The Winding Way Home, it would be unflinching. The plot occurs between two bookends of undeserved suffering, first in a child, then in an older adult. We do not merely witness “bad things happening to good people,” but rather “unthinkable things happening to exceptionally wonderful people.” In dealing with one traumatic loss followed by another, the protagonist turns away from the intrusive vision of omnipotent deities toying with humans for their own amusement and painstakingly crafts an alternate vision for himself composed entirely of the material of what is. Through Jesse the protagonist, Wildman dismisses without hesitation the orthodox conceptions of God as a personal being who directly interferes in human affairs, but he does not leave us in a spiritual vacuum. Instead, Wildman invites us to marvel, even to worship, the awesome spectacle of existence. It is important that the novel tracks Jesse for decades because this gives him, and by extension us, time to practice the discipline of letting things be what they are. And it is a discipline. It comes hard to Jesse, and it comes at a cost. To read this novel is to suspend all paradigms and try on Jesse’s worldview. In doing so, the reader takes on a bit of that cost, relinquishing tidy but unsustainable assumptions about how things should be and choosing instead to allow the joyful and the miserable to lay atop one another, like Jesse’s image-stacks, in their own kind of awe-full beauty.
— Krista Zobel
English and Humanities Departments, Rivier University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Manchester Community College
About the Author
Wesley J. Wildman was raised in a quiet corner of Australia, fell in love with universities, and became a professor in the United States. A veteran author of academic and trade non-fiction, The Winding Way Home is his first novel. He lives with his wife in Boston, where they raised their two children. For more, visit WesleyWildman.com.