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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic 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 flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain 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 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 apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself -- an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson.
When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still 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.
A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian's finest novels to date - breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting.
BookBrowsers Ask Author Chris Bohjalian
Oh, when you write 25 books, some will always draw more attention than others. But I have so fortunate to be the flavor of the month four times: Midwives, The Double Bind, The Sandcastle Girls, and The Flight Attendant. Now, I do wish more readers had discovered Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, but b...
-Chris_B
Her admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the books' bittersweet conclusion." – Publishers Weekly
"In his sixteenth novel, the versatile Bohjalian has Emily tell her harrowing, tragic story retrospectively... [A] brave saga." – Booklist
"Wrenching... Emily's voice is a compelling one… and hers is a journey readers will avidly follow." – Kirkus
"Emily's story is both heartbreaking and frightening... The book rings with poetry and truth." – Library Journal
This information about Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five books, including The Jackal's Mistress, Midwives, Hour of the Witch, and The Flight Attendant, which was an Emmy-winning MAX series starring Kaley Cuoco. His novels Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. His novels have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by numerous newspapers and magazines, and been selections of Oprah's Book Club and the Barnes & Noble Book Club. He is also a playwright. He lives in Vermont and can be found at chrisbohjalian.com or on many social networks, @chrisbohjalian.
Author Interview
Link to Chris Bohjalian's Website
Name Pronunciation
Chris Bohjalian: boh-JAIL-yen
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