This was a beautifully written book that captured the emotions of living an almost nomadic life. As Katy moves from place to place, she understands that being settled in other areas of her life, like her faith and family, mean more than being settled in a home. New beginnings can be positive and Katy proved that in her storytelling.

A Place to Land by Kate Montaug is such a beautiful memoir that explores longing, loss, and a desire to feel settled. Being from a military family and still "in the middle" in many ways myself with transitions, this truly speaks to me where I am and the entirety of Kate's words touch home. I really resonated with her question, "Where is my home?" because that's one I've thought many times over the years, as I haven't even lived in the same house for more than 2 1/2 years at a time, almost at age 29! So grateful for this memoir! It was interesting to say the least, just to mention themes, of global travels, being from a cross-cultural family, and her mother's battle with cancer...All things explored with such wonder and honesty, this memoir touches on the hard and good and thought-provoking parts of her story and past with honesty, grace, and care that you will find yourself gaining a refreshing purpose in where you are in life, where you are in your relationship with God, and hope and fresh eyes to see and explore the world anew.
Thank you Netgalley & Our Daily Bread Publishing for the digital copy to review!

A very well written memoir that would make a great gift for someone considering doing missionary work in a foreign country. The author lays her heart bare about all her experiences from the time she was a young girl until the time she was able to land on the foundation that is as solid as a rock.

I enjoyed some parts of the book but the parts about her mother being sick and eventually dying was just too sad for me to read about at this time.

A story of faith, relationship, and cross-cultural perspectives. Kate offers her heart as a guest seat, inviting readers to travel with her through life-shaping experiences and memories.

A wonderfully written memoir that pulls you in and allows you to walk with the author as she says good bye to her mom. This book will make you feel what she felt and help the reader process their own grief at the same time.

Motaung's vulnerable and powerful memoir will give readers a broader perspective and those who feel like home is a vague concept will feel deep compassion. Motaung's prose are beautiful, taking the reader on an emotionally powerful journey.
I would recommend this to readers of At Home in the World and Liturgy of the Ordinary.

Starts so dramatically with her mother’s death. Heart-rending. A daughter very dependent on her mother, following the break up of the parents’ marriage.

So many thoughts on home - is that why I’m drawn to this? Fantastic quotations.

What I liked about her writing was how it could conjure up images so well. Her turns of phrases really good. Concrete images for abstract concepts. Real gift for that. Such as ‘grief came to visit often’.

What I didn’t like were two things. One was the inclusion of emails, blogs, etc. Broke up her voice and as a reader I was tempted to skip over them. Other was the inclusion of lists of things that I didn’t care about but were important to her. The things she and her mother did as tourists when she first visited there, for instance. Could have been cut.

Raw emotion poured out to God.

I wasn't sure what to expect on this book but really enjoyed it. The front row picture for what life is truly life did well. Enjoyed the big and small details and overall emotions. It was a good read, something different.

I found myself unable to put this one down at times. Kate Motaung's ability to bring the reader into her story for a front row seat is amazing. I laughed. I cried, which is a huge accomplishment for a writer.

For me, there is a fine line between giving a reader enough detail to help them paint a picture or overusing words, causing the reader to drown. Not once did I feel the need to surf (skim read) the waters to prevent being sucked under.

Kate is a wonderful writer. Her story portrayed in A Place to Land was engaging and heart-wrenching, beautiful and inspiring. She uses her words well.

Thank you Discovery House and Netgalley for this ARC.

This memoir questions what home is and where it is. An enjoyable read in the context of a Christian life.

We are creatures of established, time-honored spaces. It’s the place of the familiar that keeps us grounded. But what happens when it deconstructs before your eyes? Kate Montaug writes from experience when, as a 7 year old, she witnesses her parent’s marriage dissolve, triggering a series of revisions in the story of her life. Kate draws us into her recollections unapologetically. Her history reveals a girl trying to find that sense of home; the address where contentment and joy reside. We see glimpses of it in close relationships, especially with her mother and sister. With each trial in her life she is drawn to the One who gives peace, guidance, and hope. We get to watch as she processes through her call to the mission field. She lets us sneak a peek into her heart as she falls in love with South Africa and the husband she meets there. But more than that we are given the holy privilege of witnessing her raw emotions rise up to God when her mother is diagnosed with cancer. What then? Is our true home to be found on a patch of earth, or in the heart of someone we dearly love who returns that affection? Or is our place to land not found in what we can see or touch or hear? I invite you to read A Place to Land and join Kate as she reveals where her true dwelling place is.
I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK IN EXCHANGE FOR MY FAIR AND HONEST REVIEW.

Where is home? What does define home? Is it the place we grew up? Is it the place where people we love most are living? Is it where we're actually living? Or is our home in heaven, are we always "on the road" on the way to our real home?
Kate Motaung is always quite attached to the place where she's living, but she again and again she has to move again and she's torn between South Africa and Michigan.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began reading, A Place to Land, by Kate Motaung. REAding the story of an ordinary girl who learned l

When a book pulls me into its pages within a few minutes, I settle in for the journey. And such a journey this was . . . crossing an ocean, different cultures and the chasms within a girl’s heart.

This is one of the most beautiful memoirs I've ever read. Motaung writes with such honesty, such depth. Her words, her struggles, her joys . . . They all moved me, sometimes to tears other times to laughter.

Reading how trauma in her childhood imprinted certain messages on her heart and how those messages formed her understanding and her yearnings spoke to me. As she walked through her growing up and adult years, those messages impacted her. I loved reading how God moved and spoke truth over the hurts in her life.

Motaung shares a beautiful message of hope and identity.

The ways she described her homes in Michigan and South Africa painted vivid images in my mind, which helped her story resonate with my heart.

Motaung’s struggles are ones I've (and I suspect many others) grappled with too. She lays them into words so beautifully. If you like real-life stories filled with authenticity, you will love this book!

**I received an advance complimentary copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I started this book without much background knowledge. A short while into reading, I realised this was an intimate memoir.
Ms Motaung has a way with words. She takes you along in her thoughts and memories. Her observations on moments and events are tender and on point.
Her description of the Hospice patients is both poignant and beautifully descriptive: "...,sitting with feet dangling over the edge of eternity."
Ms Motaung's words take you back to her beginnings; her parents' divorce, losing her first home, meeting her dad's new girlfriend, torn between her dad's relaxed parenting style and her mom's stricter style, and to the first time she considered her own death.
How she starts to realise that "this home on earth is only temporary" and the words she quotes: "The hospital is no place to sort out your theology. It has to be in place before the emergency strikes" echo onwards throughout the next 14 or so years of her life. Without her faith, I doubt she'd have handled what came her way in the manner which she did.
She gets an opportunity to move to South Africa to further her studies and discovers a whole new world. Finding love halfway across the world from her "home" with someone from another culture puts her into a difficult situation. Where does she belong? Her family at home or this new home and life that awaits her?
I had a good giggle at the rice issue: "I stood in the aisle paralyzed by all the options - instant rice, five-minute rice, fifteen-minute rice, jasmine, long-grain, basmati. Wild rice and Spanish rice. In Cape Town, there were two options: white rice or brown." Growing up in South Africa we only knew white rice, but we've moved forward into the many varied options of rice choice, and even in tiny, rural towns we are spoilt for choice, we can even get jasmine and basmati rice.
And then her mom's illness. The heartbreaking choices she has to make, stay 'home' with her family or go 'home' with her love. She finds herself questioning, debating her loyalty to her family and even her faith.
And then the intense homesickness she experiences after marriage and subsequent motherhood - the craving for repeating traditions of your childhood, the familiarity of what you know - and wanting your child to experience it too.
"It's not worth it! I screamed inside. It hurts too much. This whole overseas, cross-cultural living thing just isn't worth it!"
The tests God put her through and His unfailing Grace at every hurdle she encountered humbles a person and makes you look at your own life. The words of Dr DeCook: "Living and breathing every day is somewhat miraculous for all of us,..." and "....isn't all Real Living somewhat reckless?" gives a person food for thought.
I loved the South African references - 'snoek, All Gold; stoeps; braais'. Sights, sounds and smells of MY homeland. Not many foreign authors manage to capture the essence of South Africa like Ms Motaung has.
The words of a doctor friend in Chapter 16: "You know something? In the grand scheme of things, we all have a terminal illness. Since birth, we've all been under palliative care." summarises the memoir up for me along with words I read a while back: "We are all helping each other home." We are all on our journey Home.
I sobbed through this book.
I smiled through this book.
It touched me very deeply.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers, Discovery House, for allowing me the opportunity to read this book.

Kate’s memoirs tells of her struggles with her parents divorce and not being able to be there for her Mom during her battle with cancer as she would like as she is in South Africa. Kate also speaks of the special bond with her sister and becoming even closer during her Moms cancer.

We are not home yet

Kate Motaung, author, online host, and blogger introduces her book "A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging" with a question that comes up on her flight from South Africa to the US to attend her mother's funeral: "Was I leaving home or going home? Even after nine years in South Africa, I wasn't sure?". It is a very honest bock with statements such as "I had nothing left to give, and couldn't handle playing the mom role when all I wanted to see my own mom live." Motaung's challenges were especially great since her parents divorced when she was in second grade and, as a result and later in South Africa, had lived in various homes. As a child she saw how God provided for her mother after the divorce and she saw her mother's faithfulness in attending church with Kate and her sister Sarah. The people in church became Kate's family, but even in high school she ping-ponged between identities, living a double life-style, and searched a place to land. A mission trip to Toronto opens her eyes to the fact that she is not the only one from a broken background and starts to lead her toward mission work in Africa.
In South Africa she experiences the wounds and challenges of this young nation in 2002. Cape Town did not replace home in her heart but filled her enough to distract her from the holes. Then she feels home slip through her fingers when her relationship with Kagiso, her future husband, deepens. She is open about the hurt over overseas cross-cultural living that she experiences at her daughters first birthday and has to deal with the fact that she was an ocean away when her mother's cancer came back, unable to help, but thankful that she could fly back to the US a few times to visit her sick mother. The death of her mother raises the question again: "Where is home?" She has to adjust to the "new normal." Kate realizes as Christians we are living in the "in between" - here on earth we are not home yet.
I appreciate the fact that Motaung opens every chapter with a quote or Bible verse that corresponds to the contents of this particular chapter. Her memoir of her first thirty years of life can best be understood by others (cross-cultural workers, Third-Culture-Kids, ...) who are aware of the fact that there is "home" in ones "passport country" and there is "home" in the country or countries where one has live (I am speaking of experience, having lived in an African country for 27+ years and also having arrived "too late" back "home" when my mother was dying). I highly recommend Motaung's book to readers who are trying to understand people with such a background and I recommend it to cross-cultural workers to see that they are not alone in their struggle with the longing and belonging, with the struggle to define what or where "home" is.
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
#APlaceToLand #NetGalley

I truly, truly wanted to continue reading the book, but I really lost interest to finish it. I've been reading so many good reviews about it, but I just thought the first few chapters were too slow for me.

**I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

I lost my Mom in 2014 and over the past four years things that I've read and heard have touched me in ways they might not have without experiencing her loss. I think, that reading this book, would have been one of those things that I would not have understand half as well if I had not experienced the grief of loss in similar ways. One morning I was listening to the beginning of this book and the things that Katie touched on with losing her mother, trying to find her place... well, all of it I suppose, I found myself weeping because I understood and agreed with her words. She put to words thoughts and ideas I haven't shared with others in my life.

Fears and hurts associated with loss of a person and the idea of a place... Katie does an excellent job touching on the truth of feeling as well as the truth of who God is and what He has for his children.

In her new memoir, A Place to Land, Kate Motaung tackles the tough topic of what our home really is, and why we long for one. After growing up in North America, then spending 10 years in Africa, Kate continued to wrestle with the great desire to be able to call one place home even while her heart and mind were divided. Does a desire to land in one place preclude us from loving the other? Is our definition of home skewed? Come along on a heart-rending story of life, love, loss and healing as Kate shares her journey to find home.