Reviewed by Ryan Jordan for Readers' Favorite

All Roads Home: A Collection of Short Stories by Lisa Diaz Meyer is a collection of self-described bizarre stories, poems, and plays. It starts off with a bang with the series of Outpost stories, which were often raucous, engaging and full of personality. This is followed with a series of stories under the heading The Enduring, and these are a lot more relatable and humanistic stories. The first of these is about a grandfather who went missing on Christmas and trying to find out what is happening or if something is wrong. The short story ends without a lot of resolution, but it does propose hope and faith as a solution for handling problems with dignity.

I did enjoy this story quite a bit, because I think it is a common human situation to be worried about our parents as they get older. When they go wandering or missing, it can be as dangerous as a toddler heading out into the world, and I think it was very easy to relate to. The next story deals with another social issue with a character worried about how to tell his family he is gay, though the story steers clear of delving too deeply into this situation or challenging the reader too much with actually addressing the problems.

It felt more like stories about awareness and being introduced to topics rather than solving them. I liked the Fragments section of poetry as well, particularly enjoying the poem Waiting. All Roads Home: A Collection of Short Stories by Lisa Diaz Meyer is an interesting and provocative volume of stories and poems and people who want a varied body of work will enjoy this quite a bit. I enjoyed that it was broken up by different kinds of writing. Well done!