Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A heartbreaking and wildly inventive new novel from the bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls.
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless girl living in an igloo made of garbage bags in Burlington, Vermont. Nearly a year ago, a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had a meltdown and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault--was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to leave their homes; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily knows that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates to safety after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's house, inventing a new identity for herself, and befriending a young homeless kid named Cameron. But Emily can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever--and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bohjalian's (The Light in the Ruins) impressive 16th novel charts the life of a teenage girl undone after a nuclear disaster. Already troubled, rebellious Emily Shepard becomes orphaned and homeless after the meltdown of Reddington's nuclear power plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Wandering aimlessly, she finds refuge in a local shelter with Cameron, a nine-year-old boy she soon finds herself protecting. Emily is banished once she's pegged as the daughter of heavy-drinking parents both employed (and held responsible by surviving townsfolk) at the power plant where the meltdown occurred. Frequent flashbacks to her days at school and the youth shelter show her surrounded by influential miscreants, self-abusing "cutters," and drug takers like friends Andrea and Camille. Stealing and shoplifting through neighboring towns in order to survive the frigid New England winter becomes an often harrowing ordeal for Emily and Cameron as she attempts to figure out her next move. Through her first-person narration, readers become intimately familiar with Emily (and Cameron), as she grapples with the frustrating life of a misunderstood homeless youth on the run. Emily continually surprises herself with her newfound maternal instincts for Cameron and how difficult it is to survive life on the streets. Her admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the book's bittersweet conclusion.
