Free to a Good Home: With Room for Improvement

by Jules Torti

The German word zugunruhe translates as the “stirring before moving.” It’s used to describe birds and herds of animals, like wildebeests, before migration. Though Jules Torti is neither German nor a wildebeest, she understands this marrow-deep anxiousness all too well.  Free to a Good Home is evidence of Torti’s life-long commitment to feeling at home where it mattered within herself. At eighteen, with one thousand dollars in her bank account, she moved to the West Coast from Ontario to find “her people.” She headed specifically to Davie Street—that’s where all the gays were! Finding a girlfriend proved to be elusive, but she learned a lot of Pet Shop Boys lyrics and studied everything by Jane Rule and Chrystos for guidance. Torti continued searching the world for home. Whether prepping chimpanzees' breakfast in the Congo, scavenging for her own breakfast in the dumpsters of Vancouver, or seeking a permanent address in Ontario’s unforgiving real estate market, Torti found that homesickness took up its own residence in her identity. While she longed for a home of bricks and mortar (or log or stone), she knew her greatest sense of home was to be found in a person, the missing her. At turns poignant, hilarious, and uncannily familiar, Free to a Good Home explores what it means to call a place home when life oddly mirrors a choose-your-own-adventure storybook.

Genres: Canada

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 5, 2019

Reviews

[Pamela Detlor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jules Torti brings adventures to life. I loved every word!

Read this book!

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

an autobiography of a rural queer Ontarian finding her way and home. I enjoyed it more as I was reading it than I did at the end - does that mean I enjoyed the writing more than the content?

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2