Homebound

Brought to you by Penguin.

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