During the summer of 1974, in the small town of Cawood, Massachusetts, eleven year old Emily Stone silently narrates the provacative story of six siblings coming-of-age, as youth slips and falls away from them-beginning with the drowning of Ham, Emily's twin. Because of the secrets surrounding Ham's death, Emily has convinced herself she cannot talk and has not spoken in almost a year.

Underneath the apparent order their father imposes and the peace their mother tries to instill, the Stone family is falling apart. Every time they break a rule, Emily and her brothers and sister have to file into a military line at the sound of their father's whistle. When Mr. Stone plans a family vactation to Martha's Vineyard, where Ham drowned, things begin to spin out of control. As things fall apart, Emily and her sisters connect in a way that will change who they are forever.

As Emily pieces together her past, she begins to understand the truth of her twin's futile death. Stay is a novel of love and redemption in which Emily Stone finds her voice again and moves out of her isolation and back into the world.

Praise for Stay:

"Mary Sullivan's Stay (Zoland Books) is that rare first novel-lean of language, ripe with vivid characters, saturated with authentic storytelling. . . Seamlessly, inexorably, the story builds toward its terrifying climax. Without revealing the book's ending, it is safe to say that Sullivan has created something magical, haunting, indelible."
– Elle Magazine

"Emily's reason enough to look twice at this sensitive, simmering little gem of a debut."
– Kirkus Reviews

"Told with a child's quirky, imaginative directness, it shimmers in moments with remarkable prose."
– Boston Magazine

"Sullivan's first novel is a powerful portrait of a family's overwhelming grief, and the toll that suppressing it takes on the members."
– Booklist

"Sullivan is a fresh and welcome new voice whose first novel is haunting and eloquent, a paean to the power of words to shape reality."
– Library Journal

about Mary Sullivan