I’m a huge fan of Fran Hill’s writing and was thrilled when Lucy at Legend Press sent me a copy of Fran’s new book Home Bird. I’m incredibly grateful to her.
You’ll find my reviews of Fran’s Cuckoo in the Nest here and of Miss What Does Incomprehensible Mean? here. I also interviewed Fran here.
Home Bird is published by Legend Press on 20th March 2025 and is available for purchase here.
Home Bird
1979. Jackie Chadwick is 17 and living in a supported bedsit. She’s still close to her foster parents and friends with (aka unofficial minder for) Amanda, their irresponsible daughter, but she’s enjoying her independence – until a fire leaves her temporarily homeless. Jackie’s dad, widower and recovering alcoholic Dave, has just been released from prison and sees this as his chance to make amends. He offers her his spare room – but can their relationship survive him going back on the booze and the arrival of his gin-loving lady friend and her errant son? As things go from bad to worse, Jackie has to decide how many chances you give someone who keeps letting you down.
Bittersweet and funny, Home Bird draws on Fran Hill’s own experiences as a teenager in foster care.
My Review of Home Bird
17 year old Jackie Chadwick’s dad is fresh out of prison.
Sometimes with a book review, I just want to say, ‘Buy this book.’ Home Bird is one such story. It’s wonderful. Having previously met the fabulous Jackie, Amanda et al in Cuckoo in the Nest, I’d urge readers to read that book before Home Bird. Not because you need any prior knowledge of Jackie, as this story works flawlessly as a stand alone, but because, once you’ve read Home Bird, you’ll feel devastated not to have met Jackie sooner!
I’m not quite sure how she does it, but Fran Hill is as able to convey meaning equally as well through what she doesn’t write, as through the words she allows into the page. Her prose is simply glorious. It’s imbued with every emotion conceivable and impacts the reader right in the heart, even when they are laughing aloud at Jackie’s wry, self-preserving, dark humour. It’s the direct speech that conveys meaning and emotion so perfectly. But it’s not just brevity and pared back prose that is so effective. Some of the description of inanimate objects is so astute it takes the reader’s breath away. I found myself reading Home Bird with admiration and envy of the author’s craft because it felt totally perfect.
On the surface, the narrative plot seems prosaic. A teenage girl navigates her way through relationships with her less than perfect father, her previous foster family and her friends. So too do many other teenage girls. But this apparent simplicity belies the stunning insight into human nature, the heart rending and uplifting moments that everyday life throws at Jackie and the true understanding of social care, its efforts and its inadequacies. Heather does her best by Jackie, as do her school’s Nursey B and teacher Mrs Collingworth, but Fran Hill lays bare the challenges faced by young people experiencing social care and she does so with such humanity that it’s impossible not to feel touched to the soul by her writing. I could not have loved Jackie more. She’s the same age as I was in 1979 and reading about her life made me want to climb into the book and become her closest friend. She’s an outstanding character.
I found all the characters quite wonderful. Dave’s spiral back into drink is so realistic as he gravitates towards Doreen, that Jackie finds herself once more a ‘cuckoo in the nest’ in her own home. This gives a sense of the inevitability of life and a feeling of doom even when there’s considerable humour in the telling.
The depiction of 1979 in Home Bird is phenomenal. References to school, food, television, magazines and music all create an authentic and nostalgic tapestry of setting and era so that the reader is totally transported. This is a story written by someone who knows. Someone who understands. Someone who cares.
As a result, Home Bird is the most brilliant read. It made me laugh aloud and it made me cry. It cemented in my mind that Fran Hill is a writer of exceptional talent who understands human frailty completely and who can convey her characters in an intense, yet humorous, distilled fashion so that we comprehend their very essence and they break our hearts along the way. In case you didn’t realise, I absolutely loved this Home Bird. Don’t miss it.
About Fran Hill
Fran Hill is an author and retired English teacher living in Warwickshire, England. Her debut full-length novel Cuckoo in the Nest, was published by Legend Press in April 2023. Its follow-up Home Bird is due out in March 2025. Fran’s funny teacher-memoir Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? was published in May 2020 by SPCK Publishing.
Fran is a member of the Society of Authors and the Association of Christian Writers and was selected for the prestigious Room 204 emerging writers’ programme run by Writing West Midlands in 2016-17.
For more information, visit Fran’s website, find her on Facebook or follow Fran on Twitter @franhill123 and Instagram.
