BOOKISH FRIDAY: “CLOSE YOUR EYES, HOLD HANDS.”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What a great way to spend a Friday!

Today’s feature is a hardcover version I found recently:  Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, by Chris Bohjalian.

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Beginning:  I 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.

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56:  The way the teen shelter worked was pretty simple:  If you were under eighteen, you had to have your parents’ permission to be there.  Otherwise, the staff had to call family services, and you’d probably wind up in a foster home.  So, I had been lying from the second I arrived.

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Synopsis:  Emily 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.

Then 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.

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I have read and loved some of this author’s more recent books, so I was thrilled to find this older one on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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