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Homebound

byPortia Elan

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Six hundred years. Five interlocking lives. One computer game. And the many paths that can lead us home.

1983: a grieving teenager can't wait to leave home.
2083: a scientist makes a radical discovery about the human spirit.
2586: a pirate captain navigates the perils of a flooded world.
Meanwhile: an astronaut is on a rescue mission in deep space.

How do these four pioneering women connect, across centuries, vast oceans and far-distant planets? The puzzle leads to a vintage computer game, an unforgettable fellow traveller and a quest: to find out what home means to them.

Homebound is a coming out and coming-of-age story, a wild and precarious sea adventure, a space odyssey. Journeying through loss, creativity, found family, it asks big questions – and offers profound consolations – about life in this lonely, miraculous universe.

© Portia Elan 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Elan's debut Homebound is a joy -- at once a gripping mystery that confidently spans centuries, and a hauntingly beautiful exploration of what makes us human. Inventive and gritty, powerful and clear-eyed, it kept me up all night!

MADELINE MILLER

About Portia Elan

Portia Elan studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria before returning to California, where she has worked as a waitress, bookseller, teacher and public librarian. She was a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and an abundance of cats. Homebound is her first novel.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529970517
  • Price: £14.00
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