Hold Still

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."

When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to look after a friend s child, she does so with the best of intentions; it s a chance for Ellie, twenty and spiraling, to rebuild her life. But in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, Ellie makes a mistake she cannot take back. In two separate timelines before and after the catastrophe Maya and Ellie must try to repair their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their differences but also their more troubling similarities. " Melding] psychological insight, precise plotting and limpid prose" (Huffington Post), Lynn Steger Strong traces the anatomy of a mistake and the weight of culpability. Hold Still marks a taut and propulsive debut that "builds to a perfect crescendo, an ending that is both surprising and true" (Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car).

"