I Am Holding Your Hand

Fiction. Is there hope within even the darkest hearts? A woman has sex with her dead mother's husband. A child sleeps in a makeshift nest. A sister betrays a sister. A woman takes on the persona of a dead prostitute. All are in search of that which eludes them: an acknowledgement of a shared past, the fulfillment of a secret desire, a n tenuous connection made whole. Within I AM HOLDING YOUR HAND an array of tender, stark, authentic, and sometimes very lost souls discover a reason to live through their capacity to see beauty in the everyday and instead of coming to conclusions, they discover a way to begin again.

"I AM HOLDING YOUR HAND is a heartfelt collection of deaths: deaths of people, dreams, love, and hope. In this gritty collection, Myfanwy Collins gives voice to characters learning to live on despite such deaths. Characters who often act badly, but who are all the more believable and sympathetic because of their mistakes, failings, and struggles. Myfanwy Collins brings such compassion and tenderness to her stories while never sparing the stark truths. One of her characters tells us, The air was so sparse that our breath whispered back into our mouths to feed us. These stories whispered into me. They fed me."—Ethel Rohan