Stephanie Clare Smith

"Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her loneliness through her summer algebra class, the city itself, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults fail her again and again with devastating consequences. Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces that harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout...