Portia Elan's debut novel, Homebound, is a gentle hymn to found families, weaving together the stories of four women across centuries. From 1980s Cincinnati to interstellar space, the novel explores themes of inheritance, connection, and the stories that bind us. Comparisons to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas are inevitable, but Elan's work is less oblique, offering a puzzle-box thrill as pieces click into place.
In 1983, suburban Cincinnati teenager Becks grieves her uncle, whose death and life hold secrets. Her inheritance of floppy disks may help her decode her place in the world. In 2078, integrative biologist Dr Tamar Portman designs sentient humanoids called Ayes, intended as planet-healers, but her investors have other plans. Bound by a corporate NDA, she drafts unsent emails, unaware that her creations are listening.
In 2586, salt-hardened Yesiko captains the salvage ship Babylon, struggling to keep her crewmate Root alive with expensive nano-medicine. Root, a keeper of stories, teaches her the weekly pause of Shabbat and the mourner's Kaddish. Finally, in interstellar darkness, Lt California Solo pilots a mission to save stalled starships, a heroine in a text-based computer game, questioning who controls her story.
Elan's novel is a meditation on inheritance—the shared grammar of folklore, ritual, and pop culture that tethers us to history. The most elusive consciousness is Chaya, an Aye passenger on the Babylon, a relic from before the flood. Speaking in chorus, Chaya embodies the question: what care do we owe one another? Homebound is a queer, metafictional journey that celebrates the kin we choose.
