![]() ![]() When the police arrive on the scene, they find only a battered bicycle, a small notebook and strewn groceries. In a South Side neighborhood, in the middle of “the bitterest, meanest, darkest, coldest winter in anyone’s memory,” a man is hit by a truck and vanishes. “Hold Fast” opens with a mystifying incident. In this, her latest and most heart-rending novel, a vulnerable family is at the heart of the mystery, with a mother, father, daughter and son at stake and almost irrevocably harmed. In Balliett’s previous books, young characters are drawn into intricate mysteries involving valuable objects - from a stolen Vermeer and Charles Darwin’s Galápagos notebook to an Alexander Calder sculpture and a Frank Lloyd Wright house. All these elements play a part in the story that lies ahead. ![]() She also describes a 2003 diamond heist, at the time the biggest in history, in which the thieves were caught but the gems never found. Before the novel even begins, Balliett offers dictionary definitions of the words “home,” “lost” and “time,” as well as a brief, sobering statement about the thousands of homeless children in Chicago. Langston Hughes’s poem “Dreams” inspired the title of Blue Balliett’s “Hold Fast,” which opens with clear signals of the distress to come - and of the effort people require to stay hopeful through hardship. ![]()
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