I Am Ayah: The Way Home

In multipublished, multi-genre author Hill’s (After the Lights Go Down) latest, Alessandra Fleming puts her New York City life on hold and returns to Sag Harbor, Long Island, after receiving news of a family emergency. She is reluctant to return to a place with many troubling memories. Her father’s neighbor, polite and attractive Zach, attempts to help her, but she keeps him at arm’s length, preferring to work through her problems alone. Back in her family home, the disturbing waking dreams she experienced as a child return. When an old chest filled with diaries and documents is discovered, Alessandra accepts Zach’s help to make sense of its contents with the hope of finding an explanation for her visions. While the plot of the two main characters is slow and predictable at times, the storylines revealed in the diary entries are where this novel really shines. The ancestral voices they contain uncover secrets from Alessandra’s family and provide first-hand accounts of significant moments in American history.