A Visit Home

infobox Book |
name = A Visit Home
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author = Will Aitken
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country = USA
language = English
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genre = Novel
publisher = Simon and Schuster
release_date = 1993
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 285 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-671-74707-X
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"A Visit Home" is the second novel, written in 1993, by Will Aitken, author of "Terre Haute". Both novels have the sexual abuse of a boy as the central theme.

Daniel Kenning is an architect and is married with two teenage stepsons. The unexpected death of a colleague affects him deeply and he starts crying regularly. He consults a psychotherapist and begins to remember that, as a baby and young child up to age 4 or 5, he was sexually abused by his father. His father also hit him and beat him with a belt.

Daniel tells his wife and then his sister Elspeth. He reads up on the subject of child sexual abuse then decides to confront his father and visits home for the first time in seven years. He is accompanied by his sister Elspeth who is very supportive. Daniel’s mother is in denial, even though Daniel says that he told her what was happening when he was a little boy. Daniel’s father denies everything and tries to put all the blame for Daniel’s unhappiness on Daniel himself.

Even after Daniel’s father is taken into hospital, his mother still berates Daniel for bringing the abuse out into the open. The story ends with Daniel rebuilding his life and starting a closer relationship with his wife Leslie and Alex and Porter, his two sons.

ee also

* List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors