Home is the Prisoner by Jean Potts

Jim Singley has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter. In deciding to return to the small middle-America community where everybody knows he killed his business partner, he knows it won’t be easy. As for the community at large and especially for those close to Jim and what happened, they can only wonder one thing. Why would Jim come back here? It must be for some sort of unfinished business.

That’s the mystery at the heart of this novel by Jean Potts, an accomplished writer of numerous short stories in addition to some fourteen novels published in the 1950’s-60’s. She is known for her characterizations, especially in small towns and that is clearly evident here. The plot unfolds through the eyes of a handful of people in Jim’s orbit, shifting the perspective and letting readers in on their own secrets and theories. From early on in the novel, one gets the impression that Jim was likely falsely imprisoned but at the same time it remains quite possible he is an evil man intent on revenge. The solution is not evident until the very end.

By today’s standards this is not a swiftly moving narrative. There is a lot of thoughtful perspective from quite a few characters, much of it inwardly focused. The novel is well-written and I can see why the author won the Edgar award for best first novel for Go, Lovely Rose.