Better You Go Home

Better You Go Home, a literary novel that combines the amiable frankness of Charles Baxter’s Feast of Love with the slow-burning tension of Sandor Márai’s Embers, takes the reader to Prague shortly after the Velvet Revolution.

Chico Lenoch, a Seattle attorney, wonders why his Czech father refuses to contact family left behind the Iron Curtain. Searching through his father’s attic after the Velvet Revolution, Chico discovers letters dated four decades earlier revealing the existence of a half-sister. Hoping to find his forgotten sister and unearth the secrets his father has buried all these years, he travels to the Czech Republic. There is self-interest behind Chico’s quest. Most urgently, he is nearing kidney failure and needs a donor organ. None of his relatives are a suitable match. Could his sister be a candidate? Chico also meets Milada, a beautiful doctor who helps him navigate the obstacles to finding his sister. While Chico idealizes his father’s homeland, Milada feels trapped. Is she really attracted to him, or is he a means of escape to the United States? Chico confronts a moral dilemma as well. If he broaches the subject of his need for a kidney, does he become complicit with his father and the Big Shots of that generation who’ve already robbed her of so much?

[Taken directly from author's site]