Home of Her Heart:

A novel (May 27, 2023)

At age 10, Luisa is separated from her birth country and family when she is adopted and transported from Colombia to Canada. Seven years later Luisa still has questions. Why did her mamá die of pneumonia when antibiotics could have saved her?  Why did her papá disappear?  When a long-awaited trip to Bogotá is suddenly cancelled, Luisa leaves Toronto without permission to return to the orphanage she last knew as home.  Determined to find answers and reconnect with her birth family, Luisa risks alienating her adopted family to make a place for herself in Bogotá, the home of her heart.

At age 16, Nana Lottie flees Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport Program, where she comes to England to wait for her parents to rejoin her. Caught up in the brutal violence of the Shoah, they never come. After losing her entire family, Lottie needs to find a way to carry on.

Spanning borders from Colombia to Canada, Germany to England, a grandmother and her granddaughter, both survivors of state violence, search for family and a place to call home.

Advance Praise for Home of Her Heart

I really appreciate the inclusive and empathetic lens Tara Goldstein shares in this story. It means a lot of us adoptees to be represented with complexity-including the anger, grief, and sadness that we often feel unable to share.
-Martha Hen, writer and editor

I sat down with Home of Her Heart and didn’t put the pages down until the end. I couldn’t bear to leave Luisa and her life. Tara Goldstein has woven a multi – generational story told by Luisa a young woman who has a thirst for the truth, an appetite for love, and a spirit driven by both blood and chosen family. Tara transports the reader to other continents, different times in history linking 17-year-old Luisa with her adoptive 102-year-old Grandmother Lottie. Luisa and Lottie’s stories remind us of how war and conflict effects children and how their young spirits can find hope for new lives. I was transported into these women’s stories.

Mary Ellen MacLean, Playwright/ Creator/Actor/Director