Arleen Williams' new novel Walking Home is one of those rare books that takes the distant and complex world and makes it feel intimate and absolutely authentic. Underneath the optimistic lives these immigrant characters have created for themselves in Seattle—as students and nurses, fathers and friends—roil memories of violence and upheaval in East Africa, memories that snag and pull like errant threads as they try to move forward. Walking Home asks one of the most important questions of contemporary life: how do we make a home in a place that doesn’t feel entirely our own? Kidane and Gemi’s stories will haunt me for a long time.

Mary Helen Specht, author of Migratory Animals

Inevitably, our lives are shaped by our losses. But in this book of cross-cultural friendship and love, of deep and ever-deepening family ties, damaged people find redemption, the strength to overcome their losses, and the will to triumph. The tender conclusion is magical.

Will North, author of The Long Walk Home