Allen & Unwin The Return Home book Fiction English Paperback 256 pages

Ben's story is a gripping coming-of-age tale, in the mould of both David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and Sadie Jones' The Outcast .

When Jack, a war correspondent and wayward soul, returns home to Jersey injured from Afghanistan, he turns the lives of the Merryweather family upside down. Ten-year-old Ben and his brother and sister watch helplessly as the lively man they remember struggles to bring himself back from the brink.Twenty years later, an adult Ben Merryweather himself returns home after a long absence to visit his sick mother. With his own family in turmoil, he is vividly reminded of that fateful winter and realises that he must finally make sense of those months with his uncle Jack to help him decide his future.Set between an atmospheric Jersey with its Nazi-occupied past and the battle- fields of Afghanistan, The Return Home is a gripping and evocative tale about the breaking and mending of relationships and about facing one's failures in order to be able to move on.

Justin Huggler was born on the Channel Island of Jersey. A former foreign correspondent for the Independent newspaper, he covered the occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2004. He has also covered the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. He is the author of The Burden of the Desert. He lives in Germany.