{"product_id":"close-your-eyes-hold-hands-isbn-9780307743930","title":"Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER •\u003c\/b\u003e A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Flight Attendant\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eEmily Shepard is on the run; the nuclear plant where her father worked has suffered a cataclysmic meltdown, and all fingers point to him. Now, orphaned, homeless, and certain that she’s a pariah, Emily’s taken to hiding out on the frigid streets of Burlington, Vermont, creating a new identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she meets Cameron. Nine years old and with a string of foster families behind him, he sparks something in Emily, and she protects him with a fierceness she didn’t know she possessed. But when an emergency threatens the fledgling home she’s created, Emily realizes that she can’t hide forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLook for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Lioness\u003c\/i\u003e!\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSt. Louis Post-Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cb\u003e•\u003c\/b\u003e A \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e Pick of the Week\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A compelling tale of loss, resilience, and transformation.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, “Pick of the Week”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Suspenseful, provocative, often terrifying yet compassionate.... One of the most memorable teenage protagonists in recent fiction.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Heartbreaking.... This is an adult novel ... but readers of any age who love John Green’s novels might find [Emily]’s story, sobering as it is, an awesome one.” —\u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Stirring, sensitive.... One of the most authentic and distinctive voices since Emma Donoghue's [\u003ci\u003eRoom\u003c\/i\u003e].” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“I have a new favorite Chris Bohjalian novel.  \u003ci\u003eClose Your Eyes, Hold Hands\u003c\/i\u003e is a book I wish I'd been smart enough to write:  a masterpiece of narrative voice.” —Jodi Picoult\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Chris Bohjalian is a master.... Emily Shepard is his greatest accomplishment.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A chilling and heartbreaking suspense novel.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Enthralling and indelible.” —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Intelligent, rich in detail, filled with full-blooded characters…. Bohjalian at his finest.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A ‘must read’ book.” —\u003ci\u003eSt. Louis Post Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Haunting and resonant.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Emily’s character is written so well and her story so absorbing (this is very much a read-in-one-or-two-sittings type of book) that it is easy to forget you’re actually reading ... \u003ci\u003eClose Your  Eyes, Hold Hands\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us of our innate need for connection.” —\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A masterful storyteller ... Bohjalian hits every note. His characters have depth, his story sings.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Advocate \u003c\/i\u003e(Baton Rouge, LA) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bohjalian delivers a thoroughly engrossing and poignant coming-of-age story set against a nightmarish backdrop as real as yesterday’s headlines from Fukushima and Chernobyl. And in Emily he's created a remarkable and complicated teenager ... [with] a wry, honest voice as distinctive as Holden Caulfield's.”  —\u003ci\u003eAssociated Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Dazzling.... A novel for the ages.... This is pure beauty in book form.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Free-Lance Star \u003c\/i\u003e(Fredericksburg, VA)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A potent story of loss, hope, and the overpowering yearning for home.”  —\u003ci\u003eThe Armenian Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Rings with poetry and truth.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A dystopian nightmare entwined with a wrenching personal crisis.... The notion of ‘just a life I left’ grows more intense for somebody like Emily Shepard who can’t return and is unsure about how to go forward.” —\u003ci\u003eBurlington Free Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] brave saga.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Impressive.... [Emily’s] admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the book’s bittersweet conclusion.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bohjalian once again reveals an uncanny talent for crafting a young female protagonist who is fatally flawed, but nevertheless immensely likable.... Resonates with a message of hope, truth and the fragility of life.” —\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Emily’s voice is a compelling one…. and hers is a journey readers will avidly follow.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I have a new favorite Chris Bohjalian novel. \u003ci\u003eClose Your Eyes, Hold Hands\u003c\/i\u003e is a book I wish I'd been smart enough to write:  a masterpiece of narrative voice, of emotion, and of how—as Emily Dickinson might say—the sparest of words can hold a wealth of pain. If you need any proof that fiction can scare us, move us, and break our hearts simultaneously—look no further.\" —Jodi Picoult, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling authorCHRIS BOHJALIAN\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of twenty-three books, including \u003ci\u003eHour of the Witch, The Red Lotus, Midwives,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Flight Attendant,\u003c\/i\u003e which has been made into an HBO Max limited series starring Kaley Cuoco. His other books include \u003ci\u003eThe Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; and The Double Bind. \u003c\/i\u003eHis novels \u003ci\u003eSecrets of Eden, Midwives,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePast the Bleachers\u003c\/i\u003e were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. He is also a playwright (\u003ci\u003eWingspan\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMidwives\u003c\/i\u003e). He lives in Vermont and can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Litsy, and Goodreads, @chrisbohjalianPROLOGUE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI built an igloo against the cold out of black plastic trash bags filled with wet leaves. It wasn’t perfect. The winds were coming across the lake, and the outside wall that faced the water was flat—not like the igloos I had seen on TV somewhere or I guess in a book. It looked like the wall on the inside of a cave: flat and kind of scaly. But the outside wall that faced the city looked round like a melon. I couldn’t stand all the way up inside it, but in the middle I could crouch like a hunchback. It was big enough for three people to lie down if you curled up, and one night we had to squeeze in four. But most of the time it was just Cameron and me. I really had to trust the fuck out of someone before I would let them anywhere near Cameron in the night. But, the truth is, people came and went. You know how it is. Especially in the winter. But the igloo kept me warm. Warmer, anyway. I mean, it’s not like I got frostbite. I knew kids and grown-ups who did. I knew one kid who got gangrene. They say the doctors had to cut off both of his feet, but I don’t know that for a fact because I never saw him again.\u003cbr\u003e I’m going to try and tell you only the things that I know for a fact are true. When I’m guessing, I’ll be honest and tell you I’m guessing.\u003cbr\u003e You build the igloos in the day when the leaves are soaked but the ice has melted from the sun, and then they freeze at night inside the bags. So does the water on the outside of the bags; that’s why the bags stick together like glue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e******\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some people said I left the shelter because someone must have tried to rape me. No one tried to rape me. I left for a couple of reasons. I mean, I did feel kind of hounded—by the other girls, one especially, but not by the people who ran the place. The “staff.” Whatever. One of the girls was starting to suspect who I was, and I knew that once my secret was out, she’d turn me in. I thought she’d want no part of me. And you know what? I wouldn’t have blamed her. A lot of days I wanted no part of me.\u003cbr\u003e Also, I knew the staff wanted me gone. Or, at least, they wanted to figure out who I really was. They were getting pretty frustrated because they couldn’t find my parents. My story was starting to unravel. So, I just left.\u003cbr\u003e Given that I was always kind of—and here’s a pretty awesome little euphemism—a troubled teen, it’s a miracle that the counselors who ran the shelter didn’t send me packing a lot sooner. It wouldn’t have surprised a lot of people who knew me if I really had managed to get myself thrown out on my ass. But I didn’t. That’s not what happened. I was already plenty scared, and so I tried playing by the rules. I tried to behave. But it didn’t work. And so it would be the last time I’d try for a while.\u003cbr\u003e This was back in the days when the city was still trying to figure out what to do with the walkers. Technically, I was a walker, even though I didn’t walk. I stole a bike and rode to the city from the Northeast Kingdom. I don’t know how many miles that is, but it took me two full days, because I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was in, like, fourth or fifth grade. The worst was going up and over the mountains. I just walked the bike up the eastern slopes. That took an entire afternoon right there. One time a guy in a bread truck gave me a lift, but he only took me about twenty miles. Still, a lot of those miles were uphill, so I was grateful. Lots of people—most people—had families or friends in the city or the suburbs around Lake Champlain who could take them in. And people were taking in total strangers. Vermonters are like that. I guess decent people anywhere are like that. But there were still a lot of walkers just pitching tents in City Hall Park or sleeping in their cars or pickups or out in the cold, or building their igloos down by the water. Squatters. Refugees.\u003cbr\u003e I guess it would have been a lot worse if Reactor Number Two had exploded, as well. You know, gone totally Chernobyl. But it didn’t. It was only Reactor Number One that melted down and blew up. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e******\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I was a little kid, I used to take my American Girl dolls and play orphanage. The make-believe stories were always based on A Little Princess. The movie and the book. Whatever. One of my dolls would be a beautiful rich girl who suddenly winds up poor and in an orphanage. No mom or dad, no aunts or uncles. Some of the other girls hate her, but some love her. The woman I had running the place was always a total whack-job bully. Think of that lunatic in the musical Annie. She was the model. So, I guess, Annie was an inspiration, too. When I got bored, I’d simply have the girl rescued. Her dad or her mom and dad would just show up at the orphanage. Boom. Game over.\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes I tried playing the game with Barbies, but that never worked. The Barbies looked pretty hot. If they were going to be trapped somewhere, it sure wasn’t going to be in an orphanage. It was going to be someplace way more awful. I know that now, too. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e******\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My family had a beautiful woodstove. Not one of those black boxes that look like they do nothing but pollute the crap out of the air. It was made of gray soapstone that was almost the color of my mom’s favorite piece of jewelry: an antique necklace that was made of moonstones. I think it had once belonged to my grandmother. It was Danish. Anyway, the woodstove had a window in the front that was shaped like the window in a castle or a palace. I’m sure there’s a word for that shape, and I will look it up.\u003cbr\u003e  My dad or mom would build a fire in the woodstove when we were all home on the weekend and hanging around in the den. The den was next to the kitchen, and the woodstove would heat the den and the kitchen and even the TV room on the other side of the kitchen. The rooms had baseboards and LP gas heat, too, of course. The whole house did. It was pretty new. I know now that a lot of people called our kind of house a meadow mansion or a McMansion behind our backs, but we didn’t build it. We just moved there from a suburb of New York City when I was a little kid.\u003cbr\u003e  There was a thermostat stuck through a pipe-cleaner-sized hole in the stovepipe about a foot and a half above the soapstone box. When we had a fire going, my dad wanted it to be around four hundred to six hundred degrees. When it got above six hundred, one of us would close up the flue and the temperature would go down. If it got above eight hundred, you were in danger of a chimney fire. The thermostat was kind of like a car’s speedometer: the numbers went a lot higher than you were ever going to need. It went up to seventeen hundred, and you were totally fucked if it ever got that high. We’re talking chimney fire for sure.\u003cbr\u003e My parents’ running joke when the woodstove thermostat climbed above six or seven hundred? It was “Chernobyling”—or about to melt down. I can still hear my mom’s voice when she would say that to my dad when he would come home from skiing late on a Saturday afternoon: “Honey, be sure and watch the stove when you add a log tonight. The damn thing nearly Chernobyled this afternoon.” You wouldn’t know it from the things people write or say about my dad these days, but he could be very funny. My mom, too. They could both be very funny.\u003cbr\u003e I guess that’s why I use “Chernobyl” like a verb.\u003cbr\u003e I don’t use Fukushima or Fukushima Daiichi like verbs. \u003cbr\u003e But I could. After all, Fukushima had a pretty fucked‑up end, too. And it even sounds a bit like a swear. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e******\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I don’t know why I began my story with the igloo. The igloo was really the beginning of the end—or, maybe, the end of the beginning. Here’s a sentence I read about me in one of the hospital staff’s case management notes: “Every kinship had fallen away.” Well, yeah. Duh. Even Maggie—my dog—was gone.\u003cbr\u003e By the time I was building my igloo, the worst of the shit-storm was over. At least it was for most of Vermont. It wasn’t for me, of course. It wasn’t for a lot of us from up in that corner of the Kingdom. But it was for most everyone else. By the time I was building my igloo, I was just another one of the homeless kids who freaked out the middle-aged people at the Banana Republic or Williams-Sonoma when they saw me on the street or in the mall in Burlington.\u003cbr\u003e So, maybe I shouldn’t begin with the igloo. Maybe I should begin with the posse and the SSI apartment where we crashed. That was a home, too, if a home is a place where you can say you lived for a while. Or I could begin with the Oxies—the OxyContin. Or the robbery. Or Andrea Simonetti, who for a few months was like a sister to me, but now I have no idea where she is and I worry. Or I could begin with Poacher or the johns or the tents with the squatters. Or the shelter—with the girls in the shelter. Or the people who tried to help me. (Yeah, there were sometimes people who wanted to help me.) Or I could begin with Cameron.\u003cbr\u003e Or maybe I should just begin at the beginning. With Reactor Number One.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300574810341,"sku":"NP9780307743930","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307743930.jpg?v=1767723849","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/close-your-eyes-hold-hands-isbn-9780307743930","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}