Most poetry comes from a place of deep emotion. That's certainly true for Emily Beam, Jennifer Hubbard's (Paper Covers Rock) sympathetic protagonist in And We Stay.
Emily broke up with her boyfriend, Paul, and he ended his life with a gun in the high school library. This revelation comes early in the novel, and the emotional layers of Emily's guilt and the loss of all that she shared with Paul peel off like the petals of a rose, revealing the emptiness she feels inside. Emily heads off to an all-girl boarding school in Amherst, Mass., and discovers that she shares far more than a name, birth date and hair color with its most famous poet. Through the support of her roommate, K.T., her French teacher, Madame Colche, and an artist classmate with whom she started off on the wrong foot, Emily finds her way back to valuing her own life and talents, which gradually forge her reconnection to the world.
Hubbard convincingly integrates Emily Beam's poems alongside her recollections of Paul and her life before boarding school. As the young poet expresses herself, she uncovers her true feelings about Paul's loss, and the rings of emotional shellshock his death leaves in its wake. This is not the story of a school shooting as much as it is a portrait of the fallout from irrevocable, sudden loss, and Emily's guilt of wondering if there is anything she could have done to prevent it. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness