Mother, Come Home is Paul Hornschemeier''s piercing graphic-novel debut. It secured the cartoonist''s place as one of his generation''s most skillful and ambitious practitioners; and proved a harbinger of the subject matter that the artist would go on to explore most consistently in later work: the nuclear family. Mother, Come Home quietly studies the inner lives of recently widowed David and his 7-year-old son, Thomas; both are unable to deal with their grief directly. Eisner-, Harvey-, and Ignatz-Award-nominated Hornschemeier''s controlled brushwork is clean, and his nine-panel page layouts pace David''s inexorable descent into utter despair. Hornschemeier is equally precise when it comes to Mother, Come Home''s color palette: subdued but warm, which suits the story''s melancholy and contemplative mode. Mother, Come Home is masterfully drawn; a powerful work with universal themes of anguish and loss.