Before, they were always together. Now Luke visits Tressa only at night, and when he’s with her, it’s almost like the accident never happened. Oh, there are reminders, from the way she can’t quite feel his fingers even as they graze her face, to how she can’t seem to tell him about life since he’s been gone. As long as they’re together, though, it’s like he never died, and the rest…it fades away.
But during the day it is Tressa who can’t grasp hold of the people around her, the same people who never wanted her and Luke together in the first place and are determined that she should move on. They don’t know about his visits, so they don’t understand — one misstep, one inch forward, could leave him behind forever.Read more
Sixteen-year-old Sydney Biggs is a “good kid”—smart, pretty, self-aware. No one doubts that she’ll go far in life. But lately her mother worries that Sydney is wandering down the wrong path and getting all caught up in petty teenage rebellion and shenanigans. When Sydney and her best friend, Natalia, “borrow” a car to go to a party and then get escorted home by the police, their parents pack them up and ship them off to a hard-love wilderness camp to stop this behavior before it gets out of hand, before things go too far. The problem is, they already have.Read more
In this poignant novel, de Gramont explores a loyal and destructive friendship between two girls at a New England prep school. Catherine Morrow, the book’s relatable protagonist, can’t believe her luck when Skye, the popular daughter of acclaimed senator Douglas Butterfield, befriends her. A symbol of idealistic American wholesomeness, Skye is quick to push the boundaries at the Esther Percy School, and soon she joins Catherine in a blur of drunken nights and cocaine binges. But as Catherine cleans up and focuses on school work and extracurricular activities, Skye spirals deeper into her addiction and has an affair with a teacher.Read more
While cats make an appearance in each of the 10 stories in this accomplished debut collection, there’s nothing kitschy or cute about de Gramont’s feline tales. In each case, a cat subtly teaches the protagonist something essential about human relationships. The cats, which all manifest distinctive personalities, act according to their natures (ailurophiles will be delighted with acutely observed details), and their natural, instinctive behavior contrasts with that of the conflicted, variable human characters.Read more
From Publishers Weekly
This collection, compiled by two savvy fiction writers fed up with the bumper-sticker mentality of most pro-life and pro-choice arguments, illuminates the volume of options, obstacles and ambivalence that reproduction brings through personal, often painful stories of real women. Examining almost every angle of the pregnancy experience are two dozen writers, editors and educators, including novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean), writer’s writer Francine Prose (Reading like a Writer) and editor Elizabeth Larsen (one of the creators of Sassy magazine).Read more
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books:
“Echoes of Wuthering Heights infuse this tale (Tressa’s grandparents are even named Earnshaw), which is richly steeped in a Colorado landscape as wild and enticing as Catherine and Heathcliff’s moors…readers will find emotional and psychological truth in Tressa’s struggle to let go without forgetting”
School Library Journal:
“With an authentic voice and the proper balance between sorrow and hope, Gramont effectively explores issues of suicide, death, and the problems created in their wake…This sensitive portrayal does not end with all the problems solved, but it does leave hope for a better future.”
With a deft hand, de Gramont easily convinces the most skeptical of readers that the depth of Tressa’s and her boyfriend Luke’s emotions can enable a few fleeting, and frustratingly incomplete, moments of connection for them during the year following his tragic death. One of this riveting novel’s most astonishing qualities is that it features a spectral character but avoids the clichés of many modern paranormal romances; it is instead a largely realistic tale of grief and healing. Rather than offering impossible hopes for a continued post-death romance, the imperfections of Tressa and Luke’s phantom connection–they can neither speak about the present nor feel each other’s touches–is a continual painful reminder of all that they have lost. And while Luke’s visits are a testament to their profound love, they are also an agonizingly slow goodbye and a hesitant step toward moving through their shared grief. De Gramont torments readers with flashbacks similar to Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road (2008), in which the knowledge that a character’s death is inevitable heightens, rather than assuages, readers’ dread as Luke’s final doomed moments are slowly revealed. The novel should come with a disclaimer that readers who are shy about public sobbing should avoid cracking this one open on public transportation, in waiting rooms or during classroom silent sustained reading times. A must-read.