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By Alice Hoffman
Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club Selection: 1998
Here on Earth is set in motion when March Murray and her teenage daughter travel from their California home to
New England. Their stay is to be brief. Judith Dale, her childhood housekeeper-cum-foster mother, has died, and
March must set things to right and get out of gloomy Jenkintown as quickly as possible. "Five days tops," she
reassures her scientist husband. Instead, she is pulled back into the arms of Hollis, her first love--an avaricious,
Heathcliff-like individual who radiates sulfur and cruelty. "She left and didn't come back, not even when he called
her, and yet here she is, on this dark night; here and no place else." In this deep fable of loss and control, love
and fear, Alice Hoffman allows us into her characters' cores and makes us wish their fortunes were happier. Here on
Earth is filled with wisdom, what-ifs, and animals who seem, if not to know more than human beings, at least to know
how to shy from danger.
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