about the book
Allyson Healey has just graduated from high school, and like many American grads she decides to take a three-week trip of Europe. It goes by like a whirlwind, and her last day finds her in Paris, taking the part of the star-struck American in the City of Light. She finds herself attending an offbeat performance of Twelfth Night and falling in love with a Dutch actor named Willem.
Willem is everything Allyson is not. She is ordered and packed. He is wild, relaxed, and self-confident. Not knowing why, Allyson agrees to not go back to the States quite yet, but stays with Willem another romantic day in Paris.
Then Willem disappears.
Dazed and confused, and hurt, Allyson returns home, changes her previous college plans and takes up theater against her mother’s wishes. In the next months Allyson throws herself into acting and language, and wherever she can collects clues about Willem.
Will she ever find him again?
about the author
Brooklyn born and raised, Gayle still lives there with her husband, a former punk rocker, and her two daughters. She likes it there because Brooklyn is a very active literary community. She went to the University of Oregon, and was involved with its very lively music scene. It was her days in Oregon that inspired her story If I Stay.
After college, Gayle worked as a journalist for Seventeen magazine specializing in reporting on young people’s social issues and injustices. She covered everything from migrant farm workers to child soldiers in Sierra Leone. She later freelanced for several news, fashion, and travel periodicals.
After the birth of her children, Gayle gave up her traveling lifestyle and decided to write novels. But you never know when the Tonga transvestite, Kazakhstan Tolkien obsessed punk, or the Tanzania working class hip-hop dancer may show up it one of her books.
Sources:
Author website
Also by Gayle Forman:
I Was Here. Viking Juvenile. 2015.
Just One Year (Just One Day, Book 2). Dutton Juvenile. 2013.
Where She Went (If I Stay, Book 2). Dutton Juvenile. 2011.
If I Stay (If I Stay, Book 1). Dutton Juvenile. 2009.
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