No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run

Tyler Wetherall is spending her 12th birthday in St. Lucia with her older sister and fugitive father when the phone call comes: Scotland Yard has tracked him to his not-so-secret location, and the girls need to flee to their mother in London immediately. In No Way Home, editor and creative writing instructor Wetherall artfully shares her life in pieces--from early days living as something resembling a family unit to her adolescent years filled with secrecy and surveillance while separated from her on-the-run father, and finally her adult efforts to learn and come to terms with the family legacy.

The first half of Wetherall's memoir reads like emotionally exhausting spy fiction. By age nine, she has lived in 13 houses in five countries on two continents, yet knows nothing of fake identities or legal problems. Reliving the accounts of her siblings as they begin to suss out the family secret is thrilling and gut-wrenching. Wetherall, who kept a journal from a young age, infuses her early memories--filled with clandestine phone calls and surprise visits from black-coated authorities--with a riveting presence of thought and perception.

Aided by her father's 300,000-word prison treatise, Wetherall reveals the saga behind the screens her parents employed to protect their three children. Although it lacks the emotional resonance of Wetherall's childhood account, her father's account of the impact his life had on the relationships, dynamics and paths of the family lends completeness to an undeniably fascinating work. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

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