Some Things That Stay

A New York Times Notable Book, Winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, A Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Book Club Selection, and Winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature

Tamara Anderson was in third grade when she found out most people stay in the same house for more than a year. Until then she thought everyone picked up and moved on a regular basis, crossing the country, leaving behind people and bedrooms and belongings. Now she's turning fifteen, and she wants to stay in Mayville, New York. At first glance, there isn't much to stick around for. In the tarpaper house across the road there are the Murphys, the Baptist family who upset Tamara's atheist parents by inviting her to church. In the pasture there's Edith the cow. And up in the attic there's the ghost of the boy who used to live here, or at least that's what Tamara suspects. But this time Tamara is putting her foot down, and planting it...

Taking us into the heart and mind of an unforgettable young girl, and a unique corner of a rural 1950s America, Sarah Willis presents a "heartfelt first novel [in which] the characters are so vivid and rounded they produce a reflected happiness in the reader." (The Miami Herald)