Review: Not so Home Sweet Home
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 6, 2011
Goodbye Home is a short story by Laura Ware. Ann has arrived at her childhood home in Florida because her mother has had a stroke and she is in the hospital.  When Ann first pulled up to the house, her first feeling was one of revulsion.  Her father was mean, her parents fought all the time, and the hole was still in the wall from the day that her father was enraged that his daughter married a white man. He called her all kinds of terrible names and as a result, Ann and her husband left and moved toOregon, as far away as Ann could get.  She and her husband had opened a coffee shop and worked hard to make it succeed.As Ann let herself into the house and tried to go through some mail on the dirty table, roaches ran out from the pile of mail and there was also a palmetto bug within it.  Ann, as a child, had grown up with roaches all over her food, the smell of sewage on occasion and the sound of vicious fights between her parents that sent her across the street to Miss Dolly's house to stay.Now the problem was what to do with the house and what to do with Mama.  Daddy had been shot at the convenience store where he worked and had died, and with a serious stroke, Mama couldn't live on her own.  All Ann knew was that this would be the last time she would visit this house that she hated.Her mother wanted to go back home to the bug-infested house because that was the home she loved.  Now it was Ann's responsibility to solve the problem of where to relocate her mother when she was able to leave the hospital.  Some tough days were ahead.I enjoyed this short story, although it ended a bit abruptly and I'm unsure just what Ann meant at the end.  I do think the writing is good, and I want to read the anthology of short stories by Laura Ware.  This story is included in the anthology.