A profound and deeply personal, genre-bending book about finding one's way back to life after the death of a parent. In the months after his mother Barbara's death, Ben Ehrenreich set himself the task of writing a story every day. Leaving open the question of what a "story" might be, he wrote daily entries for three or four months as a way to grapple with his grief and to try to understand this new phase of life, which meant continuing on after his mother's death. Some of these daily entries ended up being short stories of a sort, often fable-like tales involving animals doing surprising things. Others were closer to journal entries, many of them about his daughter, who was nearly three at the time, and who was trying to understand death herself at the same time that she was voraciously exploring the living world. Other entries raised the question: What is it that even makes a story a story? This deeply moving collection of those daily journeys into storytelling—a finely crafted combination of fiction, memoir, and poetic prose—is both profound and satisfyingly whimsical. An innovative, versatile writer, Ben Ehrenreich takes his reader into the difficult emotional terrain of grief, and then safely escorts them to the other side, leaving them inspired, uplifted and hopeful. Praise for Hold Still "This is a book one reads again and again. Ehrenreich's rendition of grief literature is as porous and wistful as it is private and dignified. Hold Still is unpretentious, even seemingly effortless, yet it weaves together intricate threads of stories, metaphors, and quips into one glorious punchline after the next. By the final page, you can't help but turn back to the first."— Mohammed el-Kurd, author of Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal " Hold Still arrives like an IBEW crew rolling up to restore power for whole neighborhoods. Maybe you didn't realize how long everything's gone dark. Ben Ehrenreich uses grief here as a lever, revealing the electric and the extraordinary in the ordinary, sharing daily moments in the light of their own transparent brilliance. This astonishing book's not some jittery or tired buzz—we needed this jolt stronger than juice. Here, Hold Still ."— Sesshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztex Praise for Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time "Startlingly original . . . Out of love and despair (where else does art come from?), he has built a potent memorial to our own ongoing end-times."— William Atkins, The New York Times Book Review "The book is extraordinary as much for the rigor of its thinking as for the manner of its writing."— Amitav Ghosh , author of The Shadow Lines "Confessional, contemplative, intellectually adventurous, Ben Ehrenreich's Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time is a worthy addition to the library of American aridity."— Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle Praise for The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine "Ehrenreich's haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history."— New York Times Book Review "An impassioned and humane story."— O Magazine "An elegant and moving account . . . [Ehrenreich] brings a novelist's eye to his subject . . . It should be read by friends and foes of Israel alike."— The Economist Ben Ehrenreich is the author of four previous books, most recently, of the American Book Award-winning Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time . He has also published The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine , based on his years of reporting from the West Bank, as well as two novels, The Suitors and Ether , which was also published by City Lights.