Home Again: A Bob the Caretaker

Home Again is a brutal, clear-eyed thriller about the places that call themselves safe while teaching children to fear the sound of their own names. Now going by Joseph Ward, Bob Andrews takes a temporary job at a remote West Virginia residential treatment center - a place that smells of Pine-Sol, old fear, and money spent on everything except the children. The brochures promise healing. The walls tell a different story. When Bob meets a boy named Eli Mercer, a child who counts exits instead of trusting adults, he recognizes the same pattern he's seen in care homes, universities, and nonprofits across the country: institutions that hide their violence behind mission statements and clean floors. But Home Again is worse. Here, the doors don't just close - they lock. And the people who hurt children call it therapy. To protect Eli, Bob will have to cross lines he's never crossed before... and decide whether coming home is a promise or a threat. Home Again is the fifth book in the Bob the Caretaker series, following House Rules, No Visitors, The Ivory Tower, and Borderlines - a continuing journey through the institutions America trusts most, and the man who walks into them under a new name each time to see what they're trying to hide.