Homegoing Family Tree Novels & Stories

The two family’s had always been close. Bailey Everleigh never thought too much about it until the summer that everything changed. She had been raised with her own family, and theirs was always nearby as well. They did almost everything together. She had always thought it was because both were large families. They understood the way things were done in them that people who didn’t have eight-plus kids could never.

Dr. Okafor's research assistant, a methodical graduate student named Priya Fitzgerald whom Wren had come to appreciate for her willingness to spend entire afternoons tracing genealogical records without complaint, found the first thread to the wider Calloway family in a set of census records from 1970, cross-referenced against a Social Security death index that traced two of Elias Calloway's grandchildren, beyond the line that led to Wren and Isabella's grandmother, to a small city in Ohio neither Wren nor Isabella had ever had reason to visit.

They worked for hours, carefully cross referencing every name they’d found this year against Margaret’s growing archive, watching the family tree slowly take shape on the screen between them, an enormous, sprawling structure finally visible all at once. By early afternoon, the shape of it had become unmistakable. “Dave,” Sophia said slowly, staring at the screen. “Look at this. Everyone we found this year. Every single person. They all eventually connect back to Hope, through different lines, different surnames, different countries even. But it’s the same family. It was always the same family.” Dave looked at the enormous tree spreading out across both their screens, a hundred years of caref