Maya Taylor, an intense, gifted English professor, has a tendency to
retreat when she is needed most, escaping on long morning runs or
finding comfort in the well-thumbed novels in her library. But when she
sends her daughter Ellie to Florida to care for a friend's child, it's
with the best of intentions. Twenty and spiraling, Ellie is lost in a
fog of drugs and men--desperately in need of a fresh start. Her life
with this attractive new family in Florida begins well, but Ellie is
crippled by the fear that she'll only disappoint those around her . . .
again. And in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, she finally
makes a mistake she cannot take back.
The accident hangs over both mother and daughter as they try to repair
their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their
differences but also their more startling similarities. In Maya's and
Ellie's echoing narratives, Lynn Steger Strong creates a searing,
unforgettable portrait of familial love and the tender heartache of
motherhood--from the sweltering Florida heat to the bone-cold of New
York in January. Churning toward one fateful day in two separate
timelines, Hold Still is a story of before and after and the
impossible distance in between.
Heralding the arrival of a profoundly moving new talent, this novel
marks a taut and propulsive debut that "builds to a perfect crescendo,
an ending that is both surprising and true" (Marcy Dermansky). Hold
Still explores the weight of culpability and the depths and limits of a
mother's love.
"Hold Still is an unblinking examination of family, the mother-child
bond, and the storms it must withstand. Lynn Strong pulls no punches in
considering not just how deep, but also how misguided a mother's love
can be."--Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
