Homebound, Portia Elan
Homebound, Portia Elan
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Homebound

Author: Portia Elan

Narrator: Lisa Flanagan, Helen Laser, Yu-Li Alice Shen, Nancy Wu

Unabridged: 9 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/05/2026


Synopsis

Five lives are entangled across time by one story of survival and hope, uploaded to a floppy disk in the 1980s and destined to ripple across the centuries...

“A joy—at once a gripping mystery that confidently spans centuries, and a hauntingly beautiful exploration of what makes us human...It kept me up all night!” —Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and Song of Achilles

It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. 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. All are bound together by their search for connection—and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.

A novel about our deep interconnectedness, Homebound is a clear-eyed, hopeful adventure into humanity’s future and capacity for love.

About Portia Elan

Portia Elan studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, before returning to California, where she has worked as a teacher and public librarian. A former Lambda Literary Fellow, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and an abundance of cats. Homebound is her first novel. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by DianaRose on October 02, 2025

full review tk closer to pub day but a fantastic debut novel featuring a video game that connects the lives of people across multiple generations…this will completely blow readers away.......more

Goodreads review by Bar on August 22, 2025

A masterpiece that left me feeling at the same time like I'm about to cry and like someone saw I'm about to cry and covered me in a blanket and handed me a cup of warm tea. Homebound is the sort of book that I didn't only read - it became a part of me, and I'm so incredibly grateful for that. ......more

Goodreads review by Emma on December 08, 2025

DNF at 110 pages. Maybe I am becoming a book grinch but this was another colossal disappointment (the third in a row for me). Tomorrow x3 this is not. Too many characters, too many timelines and convoluted storylines and I didn't care about any of it. I know you should always take publishers' compar......more

Goodreads review by cyd on March 22, 2026

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was so confusing and convoluted in my opinion I was definitely not a huge fan. For starters this book had way too many povs and only one of them was interesting in my opinion. Of the ent......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on March 31, 2026

Look, I’m not a people person. I’m a shy, socially anxious, awkward introvert. But this book about people finding connection across a sweeping timeline warmed my heart and had me in a tearful state pretty much the whole way through. Homebound is an absolutely gorgeous debut novel. Words can’t describ......more