Newfoundland-born author Alice Walsh’s A Long Way from Home focuses on how three children are affected by 9/11. Rabia, Colin, and Leah’s lives become linked when a plane on its way to the U.S. is unexpectedly diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, and the community comes together to help the stranded passengers. Through these characters, the reader is given multiple perspectives on how events unfolded during the days following the terrorist attack, and the origins of the political and social questions we continue to ask ourselves more than a decade later.

The first half of the novel follows 13-year-old Rabia as her family flees Afghanistan. With her youngest brother in shock over the death of their older brother, her father taken by the Taliban, and her mother too depressed and ill to do much of anything, it falls to Rabia to negotiate their passage to the U.S.

The problem with Walsh’s approach is that she raises questions about how Rabia is going to get there, but undermines the story’s intensity by relaying these details as backstory after Rabia’s arrival in Newfoundland, rather than making them part of her journey. Further complicating matters, after the plane lands, the narrative focus turns to Colin, a 12-year-old boy travelling from New York City to London, and to Leah, a local teen grieving her father’s death. 

The three characters come together when Leah’s family provides assistance to Colin and Rabia, but the introduction of the latter two plot lines results in an episodic feel. There is so much going on that we lose the original thread of Rabia’s story, despite Colin’s misdirected anger at her when he believes his father may have been killed in the World Trade Center attack.

A muddle of cultural and social themes and too many plot threads result in the story’s loss of emotional impact.