Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

　　半年前，佛蒙特東北地區的核電廠發生重大事故，肇事原因不明，成千上萬的居民被迫緊急撤離熟悉的家園。喜愛閱讀的少女Emily Shepard雙親也不幸罹難，只是她的身份比較特殊，因為這場災禍極有可能是身為核電廠負責人的父親酗酒造成的。頓失所依的Emily面對全國人民對父親的指責，下意識地只想逃開這一切。

　　Emily從社工身邊溜走後隻身來到伯靈頓，化名為自己最鍾愛的詩人艾蜜莉．狄金生，白天以偷竊維生，夜晚就在毒販的公寓裡打地鋪。後來遇見離家出走的九歲小男孩Cameron，她像是姊姊一般拚盡全力保護他。最終，Emily認清她無法完全擺脫過去，心裡的大石頭壓得她喘不過氣，在無路可退的情況下，她只能選擇親自執行那個唯一可行的計劃……（文／博客來編譯）


　　A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls.

　　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.

　　CHRIS BOHJALIAN is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Sandcastle Girls, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, andMidwives. His novel Midwives was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and three of his novels have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter. Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook.