Denny Roman at twelve: a midwestern girl with a clueless family, a bit part in the school play, a crush on the drama teacher, and concerns about frontal development. Her mother and father, divorced neuroscientists, are raising her with benign neglect. The family is virtually run by an agoraphobe named Maureen, who has a taxi fleet and a superorganized and compassionate method of managing other people’s lives, especially Denny’s.

Denny Roman at twenty-six: jets home from Hollywood for the weekend and lands in the marital minefield of her mother and stepfather’s imminent relocation to New York. She has to pack up her childhood possessions in forty-eight hours before returning to L.A. for a big audition with Robert Altman. She’s supposed to be deciding what to keep, but she’s worried about what to wear. In a deranged moment, she kisses her stepfather. On the lips.

Denny Roman at thirty-six: A playwright on the eve of her first Off-Broadway production and once again living within sparring distance of her mother, she comes home from rehearsal one afternoon and finds a thirteen-year- old boy on her doorstep: Luke, the son of Maureen and a Mauritanian refugee cabdriver. Bewildered by his mother’s recent death, Luke is looking for a place where he might fit. Will Denny keep him in New York? Will she get any help from Sean—an actor whose good looks may be all there is to him? Will she be reconciled with her mother at long last?

What to Keep looks into the lives of Denny Roman, her mother, her father, her stepfather, and her surrogate mother—all practicing variations on the theme “parent” but none of them quite done being children themselves. Bubbling with sly humor and psychological insight, their story holds out a refreshingly flexible and realistic model of what a good family—whether created by nature or chance or both—can consist of.

"A smart, ruefully funny debut....No Big Insights here: just perfectly observed details of ordinary life that coalesce to offer a realistically hopeful and genuinely touching finale." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"[S]harply observed and paradoxically tender....This study in emotional dislocation...moves to a satisfying denouement about connections that run deep and can surface when people try hard and are lucky." Publishers Weekly

"[S]mart and witty....This is a wryly funny novel that feels completely fresh. It has an odd but effective structure; depicts offbeat, memorable characters; and offers a perceptive, nuanced take on familial relationships." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

"[A] charming look at the different combinations of people who can make up a family....Cline draws readers into caring about her flawed but likable characters while passing on some worthwhile life lessons." Library Journal

"What to Keep is a touching journey, a sweet melody, played with hipness and humor, about how life shoves us forward whether we're ready to go forward or not. But it also shows how women can make silent, courageous, and reasoned decisions that prove, once again, who the real heroes of ordinary life are." James McBride, author of The Color of Water

"Intelligent, and entirely original, this story dramatizes and makes plain sense of the complex formations of what we call family, rendering the nuances of each character with an honesty that reaches straight to the reader's heart." Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle

This unique, three-section novel looks into the lives of Denny Roman and her family, all attempting variations on the theme "parent."

Rachel Cline is a New Yorker who spent most of her thirties in L.A. She intended to write the great American movie and get paid buckets of cash. Instead, she got fired after three episodes of Knots Landing and went on to create the sanitized airline dialog for David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. ("It takes brass buns to sell real estate!") What to Keep is her first novel.