It won’t be revealing too much to say that Mother, Come Home deals with some heavy topics. Told largely through the eyes of a child, the reader gets a rare sense of a very difficult set of extraordinary circumstances. Hornschemeier gradually unveils his narrative topography, controlling revelation in a way that should satisfy most readers, leaving them both affected by the story told and conscious that literature was absorbed.

One of Mother, Come Home's great charms is Hornschemeier’s artwork throughout. His work is clean, uncluttered. I have seen more than one review compare him to Chris Ware, and while I cannot know how indebted the present author is to one of the obvious luminaries of the medium, common ground is aptly noted. Even beyond the book’s muted palette, which recalls Ware’s work in the nineteenth-century portion of Jimmy Corrigan, his panel focuses and strong linework evoke Ware’s own. And of course the submerged tone, hollowed of emotion by its very flood of emotion, is also evocative of Jimmy Corrigan (which some may characterize as a stoic sort of work).

Mother, Come Home is a work deserving reflection. Hornschemeier has filled his pages with mysteries of life, some demanding interpretation, others commandeering their own liberty from such shackles.

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