about the book
It is only a single room apartment, bare except for scavenged furnishings. Not much to call home, but that is what it is to the Pearl family—Dashel, his wife Summer, eleven-year-old Early, and her little brother, Jubilation.
And though they are house poor, they are rich in family. Dash is a Library Page. Books are his passion and he has instilled that love in his children. The family has fun playing with words and patterns. After all, words are free and plentiful!
The four work hard together to make their life better. All could not be better…until one bizarre day.
Riding home from the library, Dash’s bike is hit by an unmarked delivery truck. A few short minutes later, all the police find in the bitter cold gray Chicago snow is a mangled bike, a spilled bag of groceries, and a notebook. Dashell is gone. Days pass and the police dismiss his disappearance…just another dead beat dad.
When criminals ransack their apartment and threaten the family, the three remaining Pearls flee to a city shelter, joining the ranks of the homeless. As the family copes with the rough living conditions and Summer starts to fall apart, Early seeks answers to her father’s disappearance. The police are no help. Neither are her father’s supervisors, colleagues, or his old mentor.
Early turns to the only thing she can think of…making connections from the patterns her father told her to look for in everyday life. Is this eleven-year-old sleuth up to cracking a case that involves a mysterious book collection and the biggest diamond heist ever?
But that is not the only thing Early has to solve. How do you stop being homeless?
about the author
Growing up, little Blue Balliett was a watcher. At the beach, instead of rollicking in the waves, she would spend hours lying on her tummy, watching the specks of sands shift on the water’s edge. She liked to play with words in her head, puzzling how to connect them in just the right way. She’s is still doing that today.
Blue was born in New York City, and although her birth certificate says Elizabeth, she has always been Blue. She had a great time doing normal kid’s stuff, but she also found that she could hang around such places as the Met and the Guggenheim museums. She grew to love the art and artists. Later the things she discovered there would influence her writing a lot.
Blue graduated with a history degree from Brown University, and while writing poetry, she worked as a waitress and cook, ran an art gallery, and researched old houses. While living in drafty old rentals on Nantucket Island, she gathered ghost stories, which became her first book Nantucket Ghosts.
In Nantucket, she met and married Bill Klein, an urban planner, and the family eventually moved to Chicago, where Blue taught grade school for ten years. Culling information from places she knew and from her family, Blue began to write mysteries. Hold Fast began when she noticed patterns of digits on her kitchen clock and then came across the shocking information about the number of U.S. families who are homeless. The manuscript took four years to research and write!
Although Blue loved teaching, she is now a full time writer. With her three kids all grown, most days you can find her scribbling away at her home in Hyde Park, Illinois, at a cramped table in the laundry room, with just her cowardly cat for company.
Sources:
Author website
Author biography : Scholastic
Author interview : Publishers Weekly
Also by Blue Balliett:
The Danger Box. Scholastic. 2010.
The Calder Game. Scholastic. 2008.
The Wright 3. Scholastic. 2006.
Chasing Vermeer. Scholastic. 2004.
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