This unfinished biography is an interesting read. I liked that it included personal notes and photos but it felt like it took forever to read in the format. I didn't actively reach for this book.

I came to the work of Lucia Berlin after her death with the collection of stories entitled, A Manuel for Cleaning Women. When I saw that she had a new collection, Evening in Paradise, arriving on the scene this fall, I was excited. Naturally, I gravitated toward the memoir being published in tandem with the stories as well. Marketed as "an essential nonfiction companion to the stories by Lucia Berlin", I did not find it so. There is a push and pull, I think between an author's life and an author's work. Loving an author's work does not necessarily make you love the person, and vice versa. This short volume did not turn me away from Berlin's writing, nor did it give me any great desire to read more. And, although she was working on this at the time of her death, this is very much a mash-mash of material and not finished in any sense of the word. It was too disjointed, sparse and disorganized for my tastes and, being just raw material, begged for both fleshing out and culling.

Welcome Home is an unfinished autobiography, which Lucia Berlin was working on but never had a chance to finish. Much of this material is familiar to me since I recently read Evening in Paradise, a linked series of short stories, fictionalized accounts of her life which covered much of the same ground. What Berlin did best was write about what she knew, and reading this in conjunction with her fantasized version of the same events, gives an original portrait of this fascinating woman who should have had acclaim while alive.

This book with its loose structure shows remarkable retention of early years. She was born in Juneau, Alaska, in 1936, and due to her father being a mining engineer, was moved around a lot. After the war, the family spent several years in Santiago, Chile, in elegant surroundings, before her enrollment in the University of New Mexico. Included here is a wealth of photographs, which along with these vignettes of her actual life, bring to life a person whose talent is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Since she died before being able to complete this book, it would be too slight for publication, so the last half is padded out with personal letters provided by friends and family. I must admit to a certain impatience with this form, which accounts for the less than 5 star rating. Welcome Home will be published concurrently with Evening in Paradise on November 6, 2018.