The Fine Art of Holding Your Breath

The hardest secrets are the ones we inherit.

Seventeen-year-old MacKenna Meyers has spent her life navigating the minefield of her father's moods—and preparing to follow in her late mother's combat boots.

Her plan is simple: earn an Army ROTC scholarship, prove she belongs, and convince her former-Ranger father that she's every bit the warrior princess he raised her to be. Instead, he forbids her from joining the military and refuses to explain why.

Then MacKenna's grandmother gives her an old Iraqi ammo crate filled with her mother's belongings from the first Gulf War. Hidden beneath a false bottom is a journal written in poetry—and a secret her mother took to the grave.

As MacKenna reads, the heroic story she has always believed begins to fracture. Her parents' past is far more complicated than she imagined, and the truth may explain the grief and fear her father has carried for sixteen years.

Meanwhile, MacKenna's own carefully controlled life is coming apart. Her place on the synchronized swimming team is in jeopardy. Her best friend is pulling away. And Landon Scott—the boy who kissed her and then vanished five years ago—is back, carrying dangerous secrets of his own.

Caught between the future she wants and a past no one will discuss, MacKenna must decide what courage really means: following the path her mother took—or finding the strength to choose her own.

A moving young adult novel about first love, family loyalty, and the hidden wounds of war.