Book excerpt: by Ingrid Persaud Sometimes the only way home is to leave the one you know. Written in two distinct, alternating voices, If I Never Went Home follows ten years in the turbulent lives of two narrators - thirty-something Bea, an immigrant in Boston, and ten-year-old Tina in Trinidad - as they separately navigate devastating losses, illness and betrayal in their quest to belong. Moving back and forth from the present to the past through flashbacks, this is the powerful story of how these women unearth family secrets that go beyond anything they could have imagined. Then unexpectedly their lives collide, and they are offered the chance to create a home. But can this gamble survive one last surprise about Tina's real identity?