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A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by the Chicago Review of Books, Debutiful, the Millions, and the Orange County Register
Set in 1980s Kentucky, this striking debut novel is told from inside a treatment home for troubled teenagers, where lost boys become more than their pasts and dare to imagine different futures.
They came from the streets, the sticks and every place in between. They’d stolen cars, dealt dope and hurt people. They’d been hurt themselves. There’s AWOL, who won’t stop running away. There’s Karvel, who runs the place. There’s Damico, Smoove, and Peanut. Their futures promise prison or worse, but for now they’ve been brought together to live in an old home on a hill and see about getting themselves—and each other—right.
Told in chorus through the intersecting lives of a group of teenage boys, Hope House follows its ensemble cast through a five-phase program as they grapple with their pasts and search for the one thing none of them have ever really had: a family.
In his deeply honest and soulful debut, Bond crafts a coming-of-age story that sears with the anger and spirit of abandoned youth. The Nickel Boys meets This Boy’s Life, Hope House is a novel about belonging, care, and the desire in all of us to find a home.
“I had the great pleasure of picking Bond’s amazing short story for an award years ago, and what a thrill it is to see how it’s grown into a beautiful novel of such tender frankness, building the lives of this group of kids with bottomless care and a fiercely keen eye for detail and movement.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
“Hope House is a stunningly beautiful debut; a novel of life on the margins, written with style and grace, and populated with characters that stay with you long after the final page.” —Tom Newlands, author of Only Here, Only Now
“This beautifully told novel, heartbreaking and heart-healing, illuminates what it means to call a place home.” —Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter
“[A] gut-punch of a debut [and] a clarion call for the value of compassion and the possibility of rehabilitation.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Bond’s debut novel subtly tells the stories of several staff members and residents of a group home for troubled teenage boys in 1980s Kentucky. This is a slow-burning but moving account of adolescence under duress. A haunting story of the search for a better life.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“With sinewy, loquacious eloquence, the novel Hope House explores the tenuous cycles of youth rehabilitation and the innate need for belonging.” —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews, starred review
“Bond delivers blows right to your heart while also bringing so much care, love, and generosity to a population who are all too often pushed to the edges of society. Hope House is the type of book I’m thankful exists, and one that certainly deserves your undivided attention.” —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books
“A rare, brilliant, generous, bighearted book that mines hope from the darkest and most difficult human experiences.” —Gabriel Tallent, author of My Absolute Darling and Crux
“The Hope House boys may be delinquents and criminals—as they sometimes call themselves—but they’re not caricatures, sketches, stock characters. They’re fully fledged. They’re real boys with beating hearts beneath all those scars. They have dignity. Bond tells this fictional version of life in a treatment home with a reporter’s eye, a counselor’s heart, and a peer’s knowing. He cares about these kids and what becomes of them. But he presents them with what feels like unflinching honesty.” —David Wesley Williams, Chapter 16
Hope House is Joe Bond’s first novel. He began working on it after his story “Damico” won The Masters Review Short Story Award. His writing has been published by The Paris Review, People, New South, The New Ohio Review and ESPN. He grew up around group homes in eastern Kentucky and lives now in New Orleans.