Hope House

Hope House is Joe Bond’s first novel. He began working on it after his story “Damico” won The Masters Review Short Story Award. His writing has been published by The Paris Review, People, New South, The New Ohio Review and ESPN. He grew up around group homes in eastern Kentucky and lives now in New Orleans.

“I had the great pleasure of picking Bond’s amazing short story for an award years ago, and what a thrill it is to see how it’s grown into a beautiful novel of such tender frankness, building the lives of this group of kids with bottomless care and a fiercely keen eye for detail and movement.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade“Hope House is a stunningly beautiful debut; a novel of life on the margins, written with style and grace, and populated with characters that stay with you long after the final page.” —Tom Newlands, author of Only Here, Only Now“This beautifully told novel, heartbreaking and heart-healing, illuminates what it means to call a place home.” —Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter“[A] gut-punch of a debut [and] a clarion call for the value of compassion and the possibility of rehabilitation.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review“Bond’s debut novel subtly tells the stories of several staff members and residents of a group home for troubled teenage boys in 1980s Kentucky. This is a slow-burning but moving account of adolescence under duress. A haunting story of the search for a better life.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review“With sinewy, loquacious eloquence, the novel Hope House explores the tenuous cycles of youth rehabilitation and the innate need for belonging.” —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews, starred review“Bond delivers blows right to your heart while also bringing so much care, love, and generosity to a population who are all too often pushed to the edges of society. Hope House is the type of book I’m thankful exists, and one that certainly deserves your undivided attention.” —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books“A rare, brilliant, generous, bighearted book that mines hope from the darkest and most difficult human experiences.” —Gabriel Tallent, author of My Absolute Darling and Crux“The Hope House boys may be delinquents and criminals—as they sometimes call themselves—but they’re not caricatures, sketches, stock characters. They’re fully fledged. They’re real boys with beating hearts beneath all those scars. They have dignity. Bond tells this fictional version of life in a treatment home with a reporter’s eye, a counselor’s heart, and a peer’s knowing. He cares about these kids and what becomes of them. But he presents them with what feels like unflinching honesty.” —David Wesley Williams, Chapter 16“Hope House paints a beautiful, humane portrait of masculinity that is as tender as it is profane. Bond’s narration is something of a magic trick, a gradual reveal of the voice at its center through those in his periphery. Cynicism would have been the easy route, but what Bond offers is more layered and resonant; he takes hope [...] at its word. In Hope House, Bond offers us a glimpse of the redemptive aspects of rehabilitation—that we can truly hold each other up and hold each other accountable and be better off for it. And that a second, third, or even fourth chance is as simple as a change of shirt and a home in which to run—a home where your tribe awaits.” —Sean Enfield, Southern Review of Books“In reading Hope House, [...] I was [...] privileged to be reminded of our collective messiness, and our collective beauty. Of the ways in which systems fail us. Of the ways in which individual educators and social workers and counselors try to force systems to bend to their will, to do better by the people they serve. Joe Bond’s Hope House boys won’t quit me. I don’t want them to quit you, either.” —Neema Avashia, Pittsburgh Review of Books“[Bond's] powerful portrait of a particular slice of America’s underbelly paints a vivid portrait of our truth.” —John P. Loonam, Washington Independent Review of Books