'Homebound' by Portia Elan is our 'GMA' Book Club pick for May
"Homebound" by Portia Elan is the "Good Morning America" Book Club pick for May.
Elan, who studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria, makes her debut with this ambitious novel.
Spanning six centuries and three timelines, the story follows four characters connected by a shared search for community and a mysterious time-slipping traveler.
The novel centers on Becks -- a grieving teen in 1983, Tamar -- a scientist in 2080 questioning a powerful corporation, Yesiko -- a sea captain in 2586 facing a life-or-death decision and Chaya -- a centuries-old automaton searching for connection.
"It's 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati," a synopsis read. "She's nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete -- one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness."
"Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine," the synopsis continued. "All are bound together by their search for connection -- and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space."
A story of connection across generations, "Homebound" paints a hopeful vision of the future and the ties that bind us together.
Read an excerpt below and get a copy of the book here.
By clicking on these shopping links, visitors will leave ABCNews.com and Goodmorningamerica.com, and these e-commerce sites are operated under different terms and privacy policies. ABC will receive a commission for purchases made through these links. SOME PRICES ARE DYNAMIC AND MAY CHANGE FROM THE DATE OF PUBLICATION. Have questions about ordering or a purchase? Click here.
This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of "Homebound" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Read along with us and join the conversation all month on our Instagram account, @GMABookClub, and with #GMABookClub.
***************************
We turn onto Bubbe's street. No kids on bikes here, just quiet oak trees and drawn shades and squat, sleepy houses that remind me of the Shire.
This has always been her home.
Despite the heat, Bubbe's window units sit silent and off, and while Sheila goes to turn them on, her heels clicking with annoyed purpose, I call out for Bubbe, who usually meets us at the door.
The golden, familiar sound of her laughter comes from the kitchen. "No, no," she's saying. "You’ll have to finish telling me later. I have company!"
But when I walk into the kitchen, she's alone, her cheeks rosy with the heat.
She's buttoned her paisley blouse so that the bottom hangs crookedly.
She raises her hand to tuck her gray curls behind her ear, and her hand shakes ever so slightly.
"Oh!" She squints, as if she is trying to place my face. "Hello?" "Hi, Bubbe. Who were you talking to?"
"Oh, just Elijah."
Of course, Elijah. Prophet, folktale hero, missing Passover guest, bris supervisor, fiddler. Is Sheila right about Bubbe?
"Are you hot? Do you want something cool to drink?"
"Yes?"
I get us both cold cans of Pepsi, which are probably left over from the last time you visited.
Sheila comes in and Bubbe relaxes, recognizes her, and Sheila asks Bubbe if this summer she and I could help with some housekeeping.
"Yes, that would be nice. My son is coming to visit soon, and I want to make sure his room is ready."
I don't meet Sheila's eyes. Does Bubbe not remember that you're dead?
Sheila looks in the fridge and shakes her head at the disappointing contents.
"Mom, I'm going to go to the store and get you some groceries,
okay? Rebecca can stay here and help with whatever you need."
"I can drive myself, you know."
There's a mulish look on her face now -- a stubborn expression I've seen Sheila make before. I wonder if I ever wear that expression.
"Mom." Sheila rubs her thumb over one of the charms on her bracelet.
"Don't bully me, Sheila. If it would make you feel good, fine, fine. Go."
Where is the laughing Bubbe who was talking on the phone when we arrived?
Now she is sharp, her eyes narrowed, her hand tight on the back of the kitchen chair in front of her.
After Sheila's gone, Bubbe sets me to washing the curtains.
I tip the dusty lace off the curtain rods in each of the rooms, my nose watering. Living room, dining room, bedrooms.
I think of all the holidays we had in this house, the Friday dinners, the seders, the break fasts and shiva for Zayde six years ago.
Always, I was the only child, asking the adults all four questions.
It was a little lonely sometimes, but because I was the only child, I got the first taste of Bubbe's perfect latkes.
I remember falling asleep on Zayde's lap while he read his beloved Yiddish poets; I remember Bubbe scolding you and me until we left behind our chess games and helped peel apples; I remember standing between Bubbe and Sheila as we each lit our pairs of Shabbat candles, and this was the whole world, all the family I needed or wanted.
I can't imagine our family as a family without Bubbe.
In the guest bedroom, which was your room before you moved to the East Coast, I find a tall stack of moving boxes against the wall.
There, piled haphazardly in an open box, is your old computer.
A Commodore PET 2001.
The curtains forgotten, I sit cross-legged on the floor and pull pieces out.
Keyboard and monitor in their heavy case, a tangle of cords, the cassette recorder, a dual floppy disk reader.
Did you leave these here when you moved? No, you wouldn't have left all this.
Getting up from the floor, I peer at the outside of one of the boxes against the wall -- Bubbe's name and address.
These were mailed here.
I pull off the lid and realize: all these boxes are full of your things. Someone sent Bubbe your things.
A stack of manila folders.
A mug with a lamp on the side -- an inside joke from "Colossal Adventure," the first game you showed me.
Without the lamp, without light, you fall through holes in the floor and the game is unwinnable.
Three framed photos: Bubbe and you, when you were young, wearing roller skates and a cowboy outfit.
You and me when I was seven, standing in front of the mainframe in the Baldwin basement, our arms full of punch cards.
You and a tall, bearded man, your arms around each other.
I don't recognize him.
A bundle of your favorite Ball Liner pens. A tearaway calendar of one-minute mysteries, left on March 23.
A Nerf ball with "Ask Ada" written in Sharpie.
This must have been from your desk at work.
The other boxes must be from your apartment. And then I see the envelope with my name on it in your handwriting.
For Becks
I pick it up, feel the shape of a hard square inside.
It feels like floppy disks.
What have you left me? More unfinished programs, like an invitation from beyond the grave?
I feel a tide pull of possibility, like the bass line of "Blister in the Sun."
I pile everything into the box except for the envelope of flop-pies, which I slip into my back pocket next to the illicit Kit Kat wrapper.
I’ll have to wait to see what's on the disks.
I gather up the curtains and sneeze into them as I maneuver back down the hallway.
When I started at UC last year, you promised I could spend the summer after freshman year in Cambridge with you.
Learning how real-world programs are written, sitting in on implementers’ lunch, play-testing new games.
And then in January, you canceled and wouldn't explain why.
It’s when you realized you weren't going to get better, isn't it?
And I punished you -- like a child -- by not returning your calls, not answering your letters.
In the bathroom now, I put the dusty lace into the bathtub, sit on the closed toilet, and watch the bubbles in the soapy water pop and dissipate.
Ridges run along the edge of the tub where Bubbe has reenameled the metal.
She makes things last.
Bubbe comes in to check on my progress, leans over the water to swirl the curtains. "You know I made these."
"The lace?" It seems impossible that something so delicate, so intricate, could have been made by hand.
She nods. "You see this -- "
The lace's pattern winds in rootlike tendrils, but when I reach into the water to unfold its length, I see that the lines curve and build into a loose spiral across the curtain.
"The pattern is how we survived."
She pats my shoulder with her damp hand.
"I could teach you, if you like. When you're done with this, Sheila, will you help me fix the answering machine? I can't get it to play anything."
And then she wanders out, her rubber-soled slippers squeaking on the linoleum.
She is slipping through time, step by step moving from past to present and back again.
There is nothing I can do to catch her, hold her in place -- and would I want to?
Tie her to the present, when you are dead?
I wouldn't want to stay here either, if I didn't have to.
***************************
Excerpted from "HOMEBOUND" by Portia Elan. Copyright © 2026 by Portia Elan. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
Copyright © 2026 by Portia Elan LLC. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from the audiobook Homebound, read by Lisa Flanagan, Helen Laser, Yu-Li Alice Shen and Nancy Wu, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
