YOU ARE MY ONLY
Caribousmom/Short List for Fiction
Caribousmom/Buzz Books Which Did Not Disappoint
My Friend Amy
Dear Author
There's a Book
Two Heads Together
The 3 R's Blog
On a Southern Breeze
Washington, D.C. Literature/Examiner.com
Main Line Today cited You Are My Only as a staff favorite here, noting: With a story seemingly ripped from the headlines, the award-winning author and Main Line Today contributor spares readers the sensationalism and, instead, seamlessly weaves the dual narratives into a plot that races toward a stunning finish.
In YOU ARE MY ONLY, Beth Kephart tells the story of a young girl ripped from the life meant for her as a child and raised in captivity with honesty, fairness, tenderness, and most of all hope. It's a story of unusual circumstances with universal application--no matter how dark and difficult life may seem the hope for something more is always within reach. Breathtaking in its beauty and with great heart, YOU ARE MY ONLY brings readers the story of a kidnapped young girl that they will never want to forget.
— Amy Riley, My Friend Amy
Founder, Book Bloggers Appreciation Week
"Kephart’s prose is poetry in motion—creating beauty out of everyday moments. This disquieting yet emotionally satisfying novel (written for young adults but a linguistic pleasure for any reader) alternates the stories of Emmy, desperate to find her missing baby, and homeschooled 14-year-old Sophie. The surprise is not in how these two soulful voices are connected but in the way they weave together to the book’s finely spun ending." — Darcy Jacobs, Family Circle (November 2011)
"This has a very different style from classic child-abduction melodramas such as Mazer’s Taking Terri Mueller (BCCB 6/83) and Ehrlich’s Where It Stops, Nobody Knows (BCCB 1/89); Kephart’s writing is a thing of beauty in its own right, and Sophie’s story earns its frequent and apt allusions to Rapunzel with its own fairy-tale quality.... Readers will eat up this realistic variant of the youthful fantasy about finally finding one’s real parents and being properly appreciated." — The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"Kephart (Dangerous Neighbors) writes a
psychologically taut novel, juxtaposing
the thoughts of Sophie, a teen kidnapped
during her infancy, and her grieving
birthmother, Emmy, who is institutionalized
after a breakdown.... Succinct, emotionally packed chapters
capture similarities between mother and
daughter, the depth of their despair, their
common desire to be free, and their poetic
vision of the world. As Sophie begins to
find clues about her captor’s secret past,
readers will be on the edge of their seats
waiting for the inevitable, liberating moment
that will change the course of the
lives of both mother and daughter." Ages
12–up. (Oct.)
psychologically taut novel, juxtaposing
the thoughts of Sophie, a teen kidnapped
during her infancy, and her grieving
birthmother, Emmy, who is institutionalized
after a breakdown.... Succinct, emotionally packed chapters
capture similarities between mother and
daughter, the depth of their despair, their
common desire to be free, and their poetic
vision of the world. As Sophie begins to
find clues about her captor’s secret past,
readers will be on the edge of their seats
waiting for the inevitable, liberating moment
that will change the course of the
lives of both mother and daughter." Ages
12–up. (Oct.)
— Publishers Weekly
The heartbreaking tale of a kidnapped child and her bereft mother unfolds in alternating narratives in this intense and lovely novel.... the ripped-from-the-headlines plot is here treated with tenderness and depth. Kephart's deft employ of descriptive language—"Past the door is scuffle and howl, the slow and the fast moving. I see it through the window glass, the glass all scratched with black diamonds"—is extremely effective in setting mood and creating imagery. Though the initial draw may be the sensational subject matter, readers will come away with much more.(Fiction. 12 & up) — Kirkus Reviews
The heartbreaking tale of a kidnapped child and her bereft mother unfolds in alternating narratives in this intense and lovely novel.... the ripped-from-the-headlines plot is here treated with tenderness and depth. Kephart's deft employ of descriptive language—"Past the door is scuffle and howl, the slow and the fast moving. I see it through the window glass, the glass all scratched with black diamonds"—is extremely effective in setting mood and creating imagery. Though the initial draw may be the sensational subject matter, readers will come away with much more.(Fiction. 12 & up) — Kirkus Reviews
As in many of her previous YA novels,Kephart’s not-quite-joyful ending wraps up the story with both hope and realism. The intense, sympathetic characters, both young and elderly, and the challenging, often brutal situations they face will move thoughtful readers. — Booklist
"This amazing story reads like a first class thriller." — Random Acts of Reading
"Kephart’s novels are aimed at a YA audience, but her sophisticated story lines and thoughtful writing style give her books a universal appeal." — InReads
I will confess that part of why You Are My Only appealed to me so much is that ever since The Yellow Wallpaper I have carried a healthy fear of the stories of women who are driven insane by the care of others. The fact that the asylum Kephart writes about is based on a real and horrible place (Byberry Asylum, in Philadelphia), doesn't help assuage my fears. In the end both Sophie and Emmy are young women who live in fear through no fault of their own and must struggle against great odds to find the truth without losing their minds in the process. In this very intense psychological thriller they take chances and most importantly do not give up. I like that in any novel and find a lot to admire in a book that gives me not just one but two young women to admire. The fact that Kephart accomplishes this in the midst of writing about a cute boy, a dog, some kite flying and classic literature is all par for the course for her fans but will impress many new readers who show up for the thrills this time. (And do read about Byberry if you get a chance -- it's about as scary as it gets.) — Colleen Mondor, Bookslut
Blogger Reviews
“Familiar, beautiful, fantastically written. You Are My Only is a pint-sized powerhouse waiting to be devoured.” — Bookalicio.us
"The tone of the book skips in and out of haunting suspense and youthful
exuberance. Beth has a gift for poetry and description, and the
resulting work is one that tugs at your heart and makes you want to open
your door to Sophie and Emmy and all of the delightful other
characters." — On a Southern Breeze
"This
will be the most extraordinary and probably one of the most memorable
books you'll read for a long time. I suggest going right away to buy
your hard copy, first edition because you'll want it in your personal
library. I predict it will be one of the Top Best Books of 2011. It
is so masterfully written that you could simply close your eyes and
point on any given page, and you'll land at a beautiful turn of phrase
or description. This is a book of the heart and soul. This is a book
that only an author of the highest quality could write." — A Bookish Libraria
"Although marketed as a book for young adults, there are no age limitations on a beautifully written story like this one. But I wish more young adults would read books like this – books that make you realize the power of loving human relationships and the ability to redeem yourself, books that explore the deepest of human emotions universal to every age, books that elevate beautiful language to an art form. You Are My Only is such a book. Read it whatever your age." — Bookstack
"You Are My Only is a book that could so easily fall into others of its ilk. It has the makings of a high-end drama that promises teenage angst and romance, but it instead goes the less trodden path. You use sparse prose, rich characterization, and a simple plot to share a simple connection between two people that may or may not come to fruition. You end on a note that leaves so much left to be said, yet completes the story in such a timely way." — Dear Author
"You Are My Only is an emotional powerhouse drawing redemption out of the shattered pieces of lives rendered asunder by a single event. Through faith and love these characters can begin the heal, rebuild, and flourish. What more could readers ask for? Stunning, precious, and captivating from beginning to end." — Savvy Verse & Wit
"Perhaps that is because You Are My Only is a story that reflects the times in which we live. While there have always been hearts-held-captive baby-gone-missing stories in our nation's history (think Lindbergh, think Elizabeth Smart, think Jaycee Dugard) having this fictional one appear now brings a powerful message in these dark days of personal despair and economic uncertainty for so many. With You Are My Only, Kephart is saying that we have the strength within us to endure the darkness and break through into the light. It is a message that she personally knows well, and it shows - beautifully, triumphantly - in this novel." Highly recommended. — The Betty and Boo Chronicles
"You Are My Only
is a gorgeously written YA novel. That’s the first thing I want you to know about it. The second thing is that I couldn’t put it down. I read it in a day, ignoring my children. My older daughter, age 13, curious about my absorption, examined the cover and picked up the book to see what it was all about. That is the beauty of a paper book." — Lilian Nattel
is a gorgeously written YA novel. That’s the first thing I want you to know about it. The second thing is that I couldn’t put it down. I read it in a day, ignoring my children. My older daughter, age 13, curious about my absorption, examined the cover and picked up the book to see what it was all about. That is the beauty of a paper book." — Lilian Nattel"You Are My Only explores attachment from a number of perspectives; the fierce protectiveness of mother love is a primary theme (one that I think applies to Cheryl as well as to Emmy), with the unconventional family across the alley--two elderly lesbian aunts and the teenage nephew they are raising--considered in counterpoint. These themes largely emerge between the lines, which is a hallmark of this author's storytelling style. Kephart’s writing is poetic and evocative, and as I said, it rewards attention paid to it...and to the things she doesn't actually say. One of her great strengths is that she can tell a powerful story without hammering all the points home. And this is a powerful, memorable story, ambitious in structure and emotionally affecting." — The 3 R's Blog
"But, then I heard Good Things about You Are My Only. So I decided to give it a go. After all, it’s by Beth Kephart, and her writing is not only consistently strong but consistently original. She shows me things that I wouldn’t notice without her, makes everyday actions into things of beauty by describing them in new ways. Sometimes, that make-you-blink description appears in simple phrases like “...she undressed the hangers...” to describe a woman packing, while at others, it’s simply in the way Kephart strings her narrator’s thoughts together.... Long story short? I’m glad that I decided to read it." — Kirkus Reviews Blog
"I’ll be honest. Sophie is a sweet, brave kid and her journey towards truth, no matter the cost, is brave and admirable. But it’s Emmy, broken, lost Emmy, who broke my heart. Sophie will be fine: she has Miss Helen and Miss Cloris and Joey and her whole future ahead of her. It is Emmy I’m scared for: scared because she was committed for having a realistic, appropriate reaction to her stolen child and denied her grief and rage and loss. Scared, because she’s young and poor with no one. It was so easy for her to be committed, a problem to be taken care of by getting rid of her. Her soft cries of “someone has my baby” is met with medication rather than hugs and love." — A Chair, A Fireplace, & A Tea Cozy
"It's a stunning contemporary novel written so poetically and conveys the mood so perfectly that you can just feel the weight of the loss and imprisonment that Sophie and Emmy encounter and the freedom in truth and in friendships that give you means to confide in. I'd highly recommend it to both readers of YA and Adult Fiction because labels be damned..and you know I'm pretty honest and conscience of my readers, as a reader of both YA and Adult, when I recommend a book universally. Don't expect a thriller or a fast paced drama..this book shines because of the writing, well written characters and the slow unraveling of the plot. In some ways her writing reminds me of the way I feel about Nicole Krauss's writing. Every sentence just really helps create the mood and feel the weight of the emotions the characters are going through." — The Perpetual Page-Turner
"I saw a lot of teen appeal in YOU ARE MY ONLY as Beth gives readers not just one girl trying to break free but two and honestly I'm not sure which character I found more appealing. There is also a lot more here, like Willa Cather and Johannes Kepler and kite flying and one very cool dog (who does not die!) and while the tension is fairly relentless it is not gratuitous or violent or, for lack of a better word, lame. This is just the story of two girls each trying to figure out who they are and who they should be and clinging every second to the lives they want to have. It's a book about being strong enough to insist on the truth, and never giving up no matter how hard life gets. It's pretty much the best kind of power trip you can want for a teenage girl to read."—Chasing Ray
"I enjoyed this book immensely, I actually had to stop reading it on the bus one day because I thought everyone is going to think I'm losing it, and I was, I hadn't brought enough tissues to keep up with the water coming from my eyes." — Irene's Desk
"I love quirky books that are hard to categorize. You Are My Only by Beth Kephart is marketed as young adult fiction, but it could just as easily be adult literary fiction. It's a contemporary novel that echoes the language of classic literature. Many lines read like poetry. The alternating chapters follow a young woman and a teenaged girl, each one confined to a miserable existence. The connection between Emmy and Sophie is a mystery for the reader to solve." — Sarah Laurence Blog
"One of the things I love most about this book are the characters—they are quirky, they are mysterious, they are flawed, and they are all very real. As a result, it is impossible to mistake this for just another book about a teenage mother, or just another suspense novel about a missing child. Emmy's emotions at the abduction of her baby are unflinchingly raw, and so are Sophie's as she discovers more and more about the life she could be living, the life that her mother has been keeping from her. Sophie begins to venture outside of the house, spending time with her neighbors: the boy her age, Joey, and his dog, Harvey; his guardians, Aunt Cloris and Aunt Helen, who are a couple but whose relationship is never harped upon or spotlighted, simply shown for its warmth and honesty and love. These are the things that are missing in Sophie's life: true friendship, unconditional love, and stability, and it's up to Sophie to find out why." — Finding Wonderland
"This one will grab you and never let you go. You will relate to and remember these characters as they spend afternoons reading classics and eating custard or baking cookies and creating a kite. You will relate to the heartache a mother feels when her child is taken and when a person suddenly loses their best friend in the world. You will be inspired by the underlying message of hope when all seems lost. I will OWN this book as soon as I can buy it and it will get a special place on my shelf." — Woven Myst
"You Are My Only is a tiny book. The page count is not high, and the volume is slim. But, it never reads that way, and I think it’s because the reader is so fully present in all the character’s lives, and they are all strong and lovable. Motherhood and nurturing are strong themes throughout. Joey’s aunts parent him after a terrible tragedy and they bring Sophie into the fold, Emmy mothers a dear friend, when they both have no one else, and she especially does not have “Baby”, and Sophie mothers her own mother seemingly on the verge of a breakdown a long time coming. I felt deeply for these characters who were intent on forging pathways to love through the obstacles life paced in their way. While I did say that there wasn’t mystery in how the stories connected, I was on the edge of my seat trying to see how it would play out." — Linus's Blanket
"For the last few days, since I turned the last page and read the final words, Emmy and Sophie have been continually in my mind. I find myself imagining the next scene, and the next, and the next, because I don’t want to say goodbye to them. You Are My Only is that kind of book." — Books and Movies
"Beth Kephart is a beautiful writer; I first experienced her wonderful style in Nothing But Ghosts and I’ve been looking forward to another read since. She has the incredible talent of getting right to the heart of human emotion and expressing it through her prose while telling a story. Some of the imagery is simply stunning, causing me to go back and read over again just to savor the beauty of the words." — Medieval Bookworm
"It was easy to relate to the heartache, the circumstances beyond their control but I didn't find this a depressing read. It was equally easy to revel in Sophie's new-found joy in small wondrous things; eating a cookie, flying a kite, having a friend. I'm wholeheartedly recommending this one to mature YA readers and adults and Beth will go on my "author's who write from the heart" list! — The Eclectic Reader
"I enjoyed this book immensely, I actually had to stop reading it on the bus one day because I thought everyone is going to think I'm losing it, and I was, I hadn't brought enough tissues to keep up with the water coming from my eyes." — Irene's Desk
"I love quirky books that are hard to categorize. You Are My Only by Beth Kephart is marketed as young adult fiction, but it could just as easily be adult literary fiction. It's a contemporary novel that echoes the language of classic literature. Many lines read like poetry. The alternating chapters follow a young woman and a teenaged girl, each one confined to a miserable existence. The connection between Emmy and Sophie is a mystery for the reader to solve." — Sarah Laurence Blog
"One of the things I love most about this book are the characters—they are quirky, they are mysterious, they are flawed, and they are all very real. As a result, it is impossible to mistake this for just another book about a teenage mother, or just another suspense novel about a missing child. Emmy's emotions at the abduction of her baby are unflinchingly raw, and so are Sophie's as she discovers more and more about the life she could be living, the life that her mother has been keeping from her. Sophie begins to venture outside of the house, spending time with her neighbors: the boy her age, Joey, and his dog, Harvey; his guardians, Aunt Cloris and Aunt Helen, who are a couple but whose relationship is never harped upon or spotlighted, simply shown for its warmth and honesty and love. These are the things that are missing in Sophie's life: true friendship, unconditional love, and stability, and it's up to Sophie to find out why." — Finding Wonderland
"This one will grab you and never let you go. You will relate to and remember these characters as they spend afternoons reading classics and eating custard or baking cookies and creating a kite. You will relate to the heartache a mother feels when her child is taken and when a person suddenly loses their best friend in the world. You will be inspired by the underlying message of hope when all seems lost. I will OWN this book as soon as I can buy it and it will get a special place on my shelf." — Woven Myst
"You Are My Only is a tiny book. The page count is not high, and the volume is slim. But, it never reads that way, and I think it’s because the reader is so fully present in all the character’s lives, and they are all strong and lovable. Motherhood and nurturing are strong themes throughout. Joey’s aunts parent him after a terrible tragedy and they bring Sophie into the fold, Emmy mothers a dear friend, when they both have no one else, and she especially does not have “Baby”, and Sophie mothers her own mother seemingly on the verge of a breakdown a long time coming. I felt deeply for these characters who were intent on forging pathways to love through the obstacles life paced in their way. While I did say that there wasn’t mystery in how the stories connected, I was on the edge of my seat trying to see how it would play out." — Linus's Blanket
"For the last few days, since I turned the last page and read the final words, Emmy and Sophie have been continually in my mind. I find myself imagining the next scene, and the next, and the next, because I don’t want to say goodbye to them. You Are My Only is that kind of book." — Books and Movies
"Beth Kephart is a beautiful writer; I first experienced her wonderful style in Nothing But Ghosts and I’ve been looking forward to another read since. She has the incredible talent of getting right to the heart of human emotion and expressing it through her prose while telling a story. Some of the imagery is simply stunning, causing me to go back and read over again just to savor the beauty of the words." — Medieval Bookworm
You Are My Only is current, relevant, and gracefully written with gripping realism. There is no shrinking back. Thank you, Beth, for staying truly dedicated to the fine art of writing. — On Point
"As always, Kephart chooses her words with care, and while the language is not as ‘ethereal’ as in some of her recent books, her images and descriptions and wording remain essential in understanding the characters and surroundings. There are secrets that need to be unearthed and things to ponder. There are relationships that you are jealous you are not a part of and those you are glad you have not experienced. You can read You Are My Only quickly and enjoy the story or you can read it slowly and savor every word and nuance and description. Either way, you must read Beth Kephart’s latest addition to Young Adult literature, You Are My Only. More than likely, after you’ve read it once, you’ll go back and read it again. I know I will." — Two Heads Together
"Beth Kephart is an author that knows the human heart and writes it with an eloquence that will have you in love with the words on the page as if they were living breathing beings. My only regret upon closing You Are My Only was that I had to leave behind Emmy and Sophie in their newly discovered freedoms, but thankfully I can still go back to visit them whenever I’d like. You Are My Only will easily be a favorite among readers, both young and old, and has quickly taken it’s place on my shelf among my personal favorite reads of all time."—There's a Book
"Her latest book, You Are My Only (due out on October 25th and available for pre-order here) is also a book about a desperate search. Two quests, really. Emmy, a young mother, searching for her lost child. And Sophie, who begins to question her world, seeking the one thing she doesn't know to look for. All of it culminating to a discovery that left me with sweaty palms and a racing heart as I turned each page."—This Too
"Beth Kephart uses a very unique style of writing for this book that reminds me a bit like Ellen Hopkins. She is extremely creative and uses a sort of poetic prose for this book that I really enjoyed. I’m not sure everyone will necessarily like this sort of writing style, but it didn’t bother me or distract me from the points the author was trying to convey. It is very different and I liked it. It comes across as eloquent and efficient and I think that it added that extra special touch needed for this book to be a great book and not just a good book." — Hippies Beauty and Books. Oh my.
"To my mind, as I was reading it, the story was Sophie’s, who is the same age as the girls who will hopefully be reading the book, and so it’s definitely relevant to them. Most young teens feel trapped in some way. If not physically isolated like Sophie is, they often feel so different from their parents or their peers, that they experience the same things. Seeing Sophie unfold and set herself free was a poignant and thoughtful exercise for me." — 5 Minutes for Books
"Anyone who has read one of Beth's books know she's an observer, that her books are about characters being torn open and stitched up with hope, that healing never ever comes apart from healing together. I haven't yet been able to write a proper review for this book, because no other book this year has affected me like You Are My Only did. It's a beautiful and powerful book on its own, but it's also a book that met me exactly where I needed to be met at the moment in life. And I think that's also a little bit of what having a favorite author is all about...they always write in such a way that you marvel at their gift for knowing bits of your heart you can't express yourself." — My Friend Amy
"In case you have not already figured it out – I loved You Are My Only – a book that takes the reader into the darkness and then shows them a way to return to the light. Beautifully written and astonishing, this is a book which I highly recommend for readers of all ages."— Caribousmom
"Beth Kephart always conveys an amazing depth of understanding about her characters and their emotional lives, while creating a story that captivates and engages readers of all ages. She writes about real people in real situations whose lives and feelings mirror our own, but elevates these experiences to an almost mystical level with her beautiful descriptive language and writerly attention to detail."—Bookstack
"This isn’t an action-filled book, despite the blurb. It’s quiet, meditative. Both narrative arcs are engrossing. I found myself loving each story individually. Whenever the narrative changed I would be upset leaving that character behind. But then, within a few sentences, I was equally as engrossed in the alternate story. Kephart chooses her words carefully and the prose is gorgeous. I found myself savoring each descriptive sentence while fighting the urge to fly through the book to reach the conclusion. Highly recommended." — The Reading Zone
"Verdict: Beautiful."— Kay's Bookshelf
YOU ARE MY ONLY: The stories behind the stories
You Are My Only
The Stories Behind the Story
Beth Kephart/September 3, 2011
Blogpost 1
The (furious) metamorphosis of Sophie
Several years ago I began to write
a novel for adults that had a certain Sophie as its focus. She was in her late thirties and her
boyfriend, Vin, had recently left her.
She was alone, a writer, and trying to piece together the unresolved
oddments of her past. Strange
things were being left on Sophie’s doorstep—signs, masks, even a pot of
soup—and the only thing that Sophie knew for sure that she was being lured to
an abandoned asylum on the other side of the woods by people she wasn’t certain
she could trust.
The Sophie chapters of that book,
which I had titled Nothing is the Color
Gone, were written in third person past tense. They had the fist of poetry slammed through them. They were terse and tense and, perhaps,
a tad brittle. The novel opened
like this:
Outside
Sophie’s bedroom window it had all begun again: The hydrangea blooms rush whispering. The owl concentrating its wings. The fox scotching beneath the
underskirt of the viburnum. Hurry
and hold.
Don’t move, she told herself. Stay still.
The
moon was fold and specter, a shimmer past white, a texture. The moon was trespass, and between the
actual and the imagined a line had been blurred; someone was closing in.
Calm
yourself, Sophie thought. Grow
up. But with Vin gone a whole
month now, her heart was a wild, torn-up muscle. Her heart was threadbare, and untrue.
Sophie’s story was, then, a
recovery story, a remembering story.
But what would happen, the editor Laura Geringer asked me one day last
summer (was it really only last summer?), if I reversed things? What would happen if I told the story
of Sophie as a 14-year-old girl?
I was about to set off for a week
in the Cayman Islands to celebrate my father’s birthday with family. I took pen and paper with me. I wrote the first 25 pages of Sophie
young. I knew who she was. I knew what she had lived through. But what was the sound of her
voice? What did she, at just that
moment, understand about the life that she was living? That was my challenge, and I took it
on—changing rhythms in my head until Sophie was first-person and exceedingly
present:
My
house is a storybook house. A
huff-and-a-puff-and-they’ll-blow-it-down house. The roof is soft; it’s tumbled. There are bushes growing tall past the sills. A single sprouted tree leans in from
high above the cracked slate path, torpedoing acorns to the ground.
Splat
and crack. Another acorn to the
ground.
Writing Sophie young was a furious incarnating
process. I knew who she was and I
knew the danger she was in. But I
had to write on and on and furiously on to know just what or who might save
her.
I hope my father and my family
forgive me for not chasing the bright Cayman Island fish during that week of
mad creating.
Blogpost 2
When Emmy called I listened
You
Are My Only is a book told in two voices—that of a young teen named Sophie
and that of a young mother whose name is Emmy Rane. Emmy Rane’s voice has been with me for a very long
time. She was inspired, in part,
by a moment, long ago, when I noticed a small child left untended by his mother. I have one of those apocalyptic
imaginations (for better or worse, and most times, in real life, that would be
worse—just ask my son), and instantly I was imagining things. The sudden
stirring of a storm. The evil
intentions of a neighbor. A big
fat wasp with a ready sting. Somebody, I thought, please rescue that boy!
Well, of course everything worked
out just fine for that child (I stayed at the window, ready to pounce at any
sign of a tremble), but that dark place in me was still spinning. Emmy’s voice was within reach, and I
wrote it down. She was familiar to
me—her odd way of speaking, the torque of her language, her searing
vulnerability and sadness. Below
are the first Emmy words I ever wrote, and the fact is, in draft after draft
after draft, I barely changed them.
The
baby is missing. The baby is not
where I had left her—checked the rope and strapped her in, pulled my weight
into the branch above, and said out loud, This is good and nice and sturdy.
In every version of this book, I
fiercely protected Emmy. True—she
had left a child, an infant, to the blue sky and the green grass, but it was
only for an instant. She had gone
upstairs to find something sweet, and when she returned, her child was missing. I knew that Emmy Rane could not rest
until her child was found—would you?—and that quest, that brutalized heart is
what defines her journey.
I could write Emmy because I know
the strength of a mother’s love. I
know what I would do, and what I have done, for my own child. There’s no logic to it, maternal
love. Not even language can hold
it, and in fact, the language of maternal love is messy.
Blogpost 3
I was obsessed with an asylum
If you’ve been following these blog
posts, then you understand already that I don’t write my books in some
preordained sequential fashion. I
don’t outline a plot; I don’t consult the trends; I don’t go with the
fashions. I write about what will
not let me sleep, and over time, and through countless drafts, the separate aspects
of my obsessions knit themselves into a story.
One of the things that was keeping
me awake at night while I was working on this book was the stories I kept
reading about urban explorers—those fascinating souls who explore abandoned
buildings, often illegally, and create entire underworlds within them. For many years, a northeast
Philadelphia asylum known to many as Byberry was a favorite haunting ground for
these folks. This gigantic
structure had been left to rot after being shut down in the 1990s, and the
urban explorers (or “cavers” as they are sometimes known) had taken over—held
rave parties there, ridden their motorcycles through connective tunnels, dug
through the patient records and film reels and all the wild and disturbing “stuff”
that had been so haphazardly left behind.
I was fascinated by this (and,
truth be told, a little afraid). I
kept studying web sites and archival footage, reading about Byberry both in its
heyday and in its awful middle years and during its ignoble end. I would talk to people who had known
people who had gone there. Talk to
those who lived in the Byberry neighborhood (to which the so-called
“Byberrians” would often escape).
Read fragments from Byberry newsletters or social servant types. And wonder, What would it have been
like to be committed against one’s will in an institution like Byberry?
An early version of this novel (the
adult version) contained a social history of this place. To make You Are My Only work, I took most of that out. But I share with you here a fragment
from some early writing that captures the Byberry that obsessed me:
They
closed the asylum for good in 1990.
They closed it because of what it had been, because of the names that
had described it. Medieval pesthouse. Snake pit. Fire trap.
Concentration camp. Sophie
had heard them all. She had seen
the photographs in the daily papers, had read the stories. About the boy in leather
constraints—strapped, never not strapped, to a chair. About the old man frozen to death beneath the beech tree in
winter. About the drowning of
patients—successive, awful—in the river and the creek. About the drifters caught in the bald,
blind spot of the too-wide boulevard into which they’d crossed, having wandered
free of the place that was paid to protect them. There were instructions on asylum recreation, signs that
read, Smoking Times: Two every two hours, one after every
meal. There were reports: They
lean through windows. There
was proof, over and again, of the mildly unsettled being rendered irretrievably
insane by virtue of maltreatment.
Cracks
in the roofs, the glass, the tiles.
Azalea bushes yanked out by their roots. Rolling hills gone to the wild tuft of weeds. Through the neighborhoods the dwindled
patients had wandered. Into
backyard barbecues they had walked.
There was one, a romantic, who’d slipped the noose in spring and
trundled through the streets, stripping tulips of their petals. She returned to the asylum with her
cotton pockets full, singing the one song she remembered. There was just one song.
Everyone
had stories. Everyone
understood. The patients never
disappeared. They vapored up, like
ghosts. If you waited, passive,
you could see them infiltrating.
If you did nothing but fear you’d be subsumed. There was no one to call; there was nothing for it; there
were no fences, no gates that could thwart, preclude, avert them. You were either the hunted or the
hunter. Victim or assailant. Those who lived alone or with doubt,
alone or with guilt, alone and self-recriminating were keenly vulnerable. They only had themselves with which to
fight the figments.
Blogpost 4
Opening the door to Cloris and Helen
I’ll be honest. Cloris and Helen are two characters who
have been living with me for more than a decade. That’s right. I
carried these two dear souls, these more-than-best-friends ladies, through a
variety of novels I’d been writing.
They were bird-obsessed in one book (not so strange, since all of my
books have at least one character who is obsessed with birds). They were digging a huge hole beneath
their house in another. In an
early version of the book that became You
Are My Only, it was Cloris who had been committed to the asylum.
I was just so happy—I really
was—when I discovered that Cloris and Helen had been waiting all along to be
young Sophie’s neighbors. It’s
like looking at your husband after twenty-five years and realizing, Yup. That’s right. You really do belong with me. Cloris and Helen belong to Sophie. She needs them and their kooky ways, their endless baking,
their shiny Airstream, their Alice-in-Wonderland dioramas, their love for Willa
Cather—to show her what is kind and good and right in this world. To show her a salvation version of normal.
Cloris is wide and healthy. Helen is too thin, and wheelchair
bound. Cloris bakes, and Helen can
hardly eat. They share a sadness
about which neither one can truly speak, and yet they are living proof of what
love is, and what a shelter love can.
I loved opening the door to Cloris and Helen. I loved what they had to teach me. I loved a certain kite, but now I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just a truly great thing, as a bird-obsesssed writer, to know that your characters have at long last flown to their proper homes. That they are roosted.
Blogpost 5
What name should we give this book?
Those who know me know that I’m
only intermittently good at devising titles. Undercover was
called Come Back to Me, for example,
until Laura Geringer asked me to please think again on that one. Still Love in Strange Places was named by my son moments before the
W.W. Norton catalog was going on press.
Nothing but Ghosts was my
title, thank you very much, though there was a slight (we ignored it!) problem—I’d
used the word ghosts in a previous book title (Ghosts in the Garden).
The Heart is Not a Size and House of Dance were titles of my making,
and I proudly claim them.
But when it came to naming the book
that became You Are My Only, I wasn’t
just stuck; I was miserably stuck.
The book had been, for a while, Nothing
is the Color Gone—but come on, that’s just a tad convoluted and besides,
hadn’t I used Nothing in a title
before? (What is wrong with me—so many ghosts and so much
nothing?) Then the book was
happily Good People until I realized
(d’uh) that that title had been used more than a few times before by others.
I’d been writing and revising like
a maniac and the title issue finally needed to be resolved—now (by which I mean
then). Since my son
wasn’t home, I called in the troops—editor Laura Geringer, agent Amy Rennert,
and Amy’s colleague, Robyn Russell.
I
need a title, I said. I might
have whimpered it. I might have
yelled it. I was, as I have said,
in a state of slight mania.
Here, for your pleasure (this is a pleasure, right?) are some of the
titles that spilled forth in a week of tyrannical title chasing:
Baby
True
True The Sky is Blue
The
No Good
From
Nothing to Big Things
Be
Good. Be Gone.
The Book of Thoughts
The Book of Thoughts
Anything
You Want
Nobody
Knows From Crazy
Real
Birds
But nothing was right. Nothing fit just so. Too grown-up. Too childish.
Too familiar. Too
obscure. At the end of it all, it
was my agent and her colleague, Amy and Robyn, who sent a sane little email,
very calm.
Q
You have written a young adult novel about a teen poet yearning to find her voice and to trust her own beauty(UNDERCOVER); a granddaughter who turns to dance in the quest to deliver a final gift to her grandfather (HOUSE OF DANCE); a grieving daughter who sets out to solve a local mystery (NOTHING BUT GHOSTS); two best friends who embark on a mission trip to Juarez (THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE); and a bereaved twin sister in Philadelphia's Centennial year (DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS). Why turn to a story about a kidnapping?
A
It's a funny thing about books: You don't always know where they are taking you or what is at work behind the apparent scenes. YOU ARE MY ONLY emerged from a newspaper story I had read years ago about the urban explorers who walk, and to some degree inhabit, the abandoned buildings of our times. I was most fascinated by the stories these spelunkers told of the former Byberry asylum—the abandoned patient files, the reels of forsaken movies, the ghosts that were said to live among the patient wards, hydrotherapy baths, and graffitti-splattered network of connective tunnels. I began to read everything I could about this institution that had begun as a peaceful-enough experiment on the northeastern edge of Philadelphia in the early 20th century, disintegrated into a horribly overcrowded institution compared, by mid-century, to a Nazi concentration camp, and slowly tried to regain its civilized footing in the 1970s before closing in the early 1990s. Who might have lived there? How might they have survived? These questions haunted me.
Q
Where did the questions lead you?
A
They led me to a character named Emmy Rane—to a young woman institutionalized for having had a nervous breakdown. In the beginning, I only knew that she had lost her child, and that that loss had been unbearable, for what, indeed, could be more unbearable than the loss of a child? I had always been deeply moved and saddened by the Elizabeth Smart story and, later, by the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard. I had spent a lot of time imagining how the girls' families must have felt, what terror they daily lived with. After several drafts of a novel that went in a very different direction, it was clear to me that Emmy's baby had been kidnapped—that this was the story I must tell.
Q
YOU ARE MY ONLY is told through two alternating voices—that of Emmy Rane and that of fourteen-year-old Sophie Marks. Is this the first time you have written a book like this?
A
I have experimented with many forms over the course of my writing career—with memoir, poetry, fable, history, even with writing a book in the voice of a river. I was very eager to work with a new form for my thirteenth book—entirely invested in building two very different voices and in relaxing into a rawer form of poetry. The process yielded extraordinary freedoms of expression and storytelling. This very small excerpt suggests some of what is at work.
Q
Sophie, your fourteen-year-old narrator, is living a strange, sheltered life when she meets Joey and his two elderly aunts. Where did those characters come from?
A
Another funny thing about books: Characters can live with writers for a very long time before they find their proper narrative homes. I have been working with versions of Aunt Cloris and Aunt Helen for more than a decade. I was not willing to let them go. One of the happiest and perhaps most unexpected by-products of YOU ARE MY ONLY is that I can finally give these two fiercely loving and charmingly idiosyncratic ladies their place in space and time.
Q
What has moved you most during your journey, thus far, with YOU ARE MY ONLY?
A
I was deeply moved when Jaycee Dugard was found alive—deeply moved that she had survived and that she brings such dignity to her living today. I was astonished, too, by the story of Rhonda Patricia Christie, who fought her way back home. One writes fiction and lives inside that landscape, but others—so horrifically—live those stories for real, must live with their aftermaths every single day. I imagined Emmy Rane's story. I imagined Sophie's. For others, the unimaginable is truth. There are no words, in the end, for what the real victims have gone through.
Q
Tell us about the team behind YOU ARE MY ONLY.
A
I was so happy when Laura Geringer, who brought me to the young adult realm to begin with, invited me to work with her at Egmont USA on YOU ARE MY ONLY. A big thank you to Laura, then, to the team at Egmont USA, and to the fabulous Neil Swaab for the cover. And a very big thank you to my agent, Amy Rennert, and to her associate, Robyn Russell, who played an essential role in finding the right title for this book.
Q
What are your hopes for YOU ARE MY ONLY?A
Every writer hopes that her books ultimately find the right readers. I have been enormously blessed, in these months before the book's launch, by the kindnesses of those who came to talk with me at the BEA, by those who threw the Armchair BEA party for the book, and by those who have taken the time to write to me after their early reads of the books. Thank you, too, to Ed Goldberg, for this first review of the book. I am blessed, and I know it. I am grateful, and I want my readers to know that, too.
Upcoming Events
I am available for classroom visits and book talks.
Contact Information
Queries should be directed to Katie Halata, at katiehalata@egmont.com.
YOU ARE MY ONLY
ISBN 978-1-60684-272-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-60684-285-0 (eBook)
Laura Geringer Books: Egmont USA
October 25, 2011
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