The Winding Way Home

A novel

by Wesley Wildman

Release Date: September 15, 2023

ISBN (print): 978-1-961741-05-8

ISBN (e-book): 978-1-961741-06-5

When disaster strikes Jesse and Alexandra’s family, their lives shatter. Jesse’s grief triggers a full-blown psychiatric crisis, which spurs a most unusual spiritual quest in an attempt to find a way to feel at home in what suddenly seems like a cruel world. In the midst of her own trauma, Alexandra is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, further pitching the family into desperation. Jesse’s weekly breakfast with two of his children, along with Alexandra’s determined efforts to fight the erasure of her memories, holds the family together despite the agonizing uncertainty surrounding all of them. Jesse and Alexandra find themselves drawn into the horrifying world of missing and abducted children and the minds of their captors, and eventually adopt an abduction survivor named Maddy and her young children. Together, they forge a new and expanded family, and create a home where everyone can heal. This is a family saga, a love story, an account of child abduction and its exacting aftermath, a tale of hard-won hope, and a profound exploration of the spiritual potential of ordinary life in the face of the unthinkable.

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Wesley Wildman

Wesley J. Wildman was born in a quiet corner of Australia, fell in love with universities, and became a professor in the United States. A veteran author of academic and trade non-fiction, The Winding Way Home is his first novel. He lives with his wife in Boston, where they raised their two boys.

Praise for The Winding Way Home

As a one-time English professor, having absorbed countless works of fiction, I have never read a novel more devastating nor more beautiful.

—Patricia Browne, Professor of English, St. Catherine’s University, St. Paul, Minnesota

Disturbing, inspiring, daring, heartwarming, this is a novel of family, of terrible events, of deep and patient love (the erotic is not neglected), and of ultimate experiences and mysteries. The prose is engaging, the storytelling deft and resourceful, the vision of life opening into a larger vision of Being itself.

—Brian Jorgensen, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Boston University

The Winding Way Home is a story about constructing meaning after unspeakable evil renders reality absurd, about the power of love to transfigure traumas that are beyond the reach of healing, and, ultimately, about the immense beauty, unspeakable wonder, and infinite spiritual vitality of everyday life. Providing a searing vision of the depth dimension of human existence shorn of all supernatural obfuscations, it’s a must read, especially for the spiritual but not religious crowd.

—David Rohr, Center for Mind and Culture, Boston

Wildman creates an engrossing multigenerational narrative of present-day America that resonates with East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude. He also brings to us the mind and heart of Jesse, a quintessential religious naturalist, who creates a fascinating version of reality.

—Ursula Goodenough, President, Religious Naturalist Association and Professor of Biology Emerita, Washington University in St. Louis

In this hauntingly beautiful novel, Wildman demonstrates that even the most heinous tragedy can be transformed through the alchemy of agape love. The Winding Way Home wilds mysticism and metaphysics to explore the intricacies of the mind, overcoming unspeakable trauma, relatable familial struggles, the bondage and freedom of death, and the resilience of the human spirit. It is an enthralling journey.

—Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling

The Winding Way Home is an astounding and achingly beautiful story about what love can do—the enduring love of an ordinary family searching for healing in the face of unspeakable tragedy, the fierce love of an extraordinary mother protecting her children from monstrous evil, and the mystical love of a less-than-ordinary sanyasi learning to see, accept, and even worship the world as it is most truly, intensely, profoundly. Wildman’s courageous novel belongs on the shelf of anyone who has become disillusioned with traditional religious “answers” to the problem of suffering or has tried to find meaning, hope, and authentic spiritual sustenance in the midst of trauma and unredeemable loss.

—Demian Wheeler, Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology and Religious Studies, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities