Reviews

“In the title essay of William Maxwell’s The Writer as Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work (Godine Nonpareil, 2023), the author and New Yorker editor says of the ‘good novelist’ that ‘you can lean against his trees; they will not give way.’

A majestic oak stands at the center of Kay Tobler Liss’s second novel, Coming Home, and it holds firm. The tree serves as a place of comfort and renewal for a family in the late 1980s dealing with various dysfunctions. From the viewpoint of the novel’s central character, Lydia, the oak’s ‘maze of twisting, intertwining branches and vines…appear…to want to enfold them all in its dense brown and green realm….”

Excerpt from Working Waterfront, The Island Institute, by Carl Little

“….Coming Home explores the importance of family members talking about their feelings, all with a strong focus on the beauty of nature and art. Fans of novels that center around familial bonds, secrets, and self-discovery will find this resonant, with engaging, believable characters and a plot that’s drawn from life and stirs real tears.”

Publishers Weekly Booklife review

“Kay Tobler Liss’s Coming Home is a tender, compassionately
rendered novel about place, family, and the triumph of return.
About memory. About cherishing, and at a time when we need
it most.”

Jack Driscoll
author of Twenty Stories, and other volumes of short stories, novels,
and poetry. He is the recipient of a PEN/Nelson Algren Short Fiction Award and a 1998
Editor’s Book Award.

[Coming Home is] “A tender and lyrical portrayal of a family propelled into the future by the special places
of their past. Liss’s intimate connection to nature and its healing power is on full display.
Heartfelt and hopeful.”

Laurel Dodge
author of The Buoyant Letters of Mimsy Bell

“The Last Resort is a lyrical ode to the power of nature to heal…”

Kay Hardy Campbell
author of A Caravan of Brides: A Novel of Saudi Arabia

“Kay Tobler Liss’s The Last Resort deals with an issue with global resonance in our times: how the needs of modern development encroaching on old ways of life drive them to a slow extinction. The Last Resort is about the conflict between the two sides involved in this narrative: the oppressors – states and corporations, and the tribal groups inhabiting ancient lands that have fallen prey to the insatiable needs of development…. Kay Tobler Liss has dealt with the novel’s technical aspects deftly. Written in the first person with Paul Collins as the narrator, the narrative slowly widens its scope as it progresses, taking into its sweep the complete history of the land and its people, down to its fauna and flora. (Some of the descriptions of the place are simply breathtaking.) …The characters – Paul, Oshanta, Bertrand – have been developed well by having outlined their past and thereby bringing their motives into focus. The book doesn’t have too many characters which helps it stick to its point without unnecessary digressions. …”

Indrasish Banerjee
Reedsy Discovery

Jayne Gordon
public historian, educator, former director of the Thoreau Society

“In this narrative of the spiritual journey undertaken by an exhausted, emotionally drained city lawyer, Kay Liss introduces the insightful perspectives of a cast of memorable characters — Native Americans of Montauk, a young surfer, an old fisherman. Their stories are deftly woven together with the writings of renowned philosophers and conservationists…. The result is a probing and thought-provoking look at how we can become separated from the natural world, and how we can begin to find our way back to the freshness, fulfillment, and freedom it offers once we realize where we belong.”