National Book Award Finalist Beth Kephart Injects Hope Into Kidnapping Story

Online, September 14, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Contact: Ellen Trachtenberg,
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National Book Award Finalist Beth Kephart Injects Hope into a Kidnapping Story Penned for Young Adults

For her sixth young adult novel, YOU ARE MY ONLY, award-winning author Beth Kephart explores the aftermath of kidnapping in the alternating voices of a cloistered teen girl and a bereft young mother. The book, which will be released by Laura Geringer Books: Egmont USA on October 25, has been creating a stir among early readers for months.

"In YOU ARE MY ONLY, Beth Kephart tells the story of a young girl ripped from the life meant for her as a child and raised in captivity with honesty, fairness, tenderness, and most of all hope," said Amy Riley, creator of the popular blog My Friend Amy (http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/) and founder of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. "It's a story of unusual circumstances with universal application-no matter how dark and difficult life may seem, the hope for something more is always within reach. Breathtaking in its beauty and with great heart, YOU ARE MY ONLY brings readers the story of a kidnapped young girl that they will never want to forget."

The book follows on the heels of several extraordinary real-life stories of young women-Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, and Rhonda Patricia Christie, among them-who not only survived kidnapping, but have spoken out about living forward. Both Jaycee Dugard (http://thejaycfoundation.org/) and Elizabeth Smart (http://elizabethsmartfoundation.org/) have created foundations designed to end the victimization and to bring hope and healing to families.

The antecedents for YOU ARE MY ONLY were rooted in research Kephart was doing on a former Philadelphia State Hospital called Byberry. Obsessed with the lives of the patients who had moved through the asylum, Kephart soon began to create a character institutionalized in the wake of her infant child's kidnapping. Kephart was well into the writing of the book when Jaycee Dugard was discovered and rescued.

"I was deeply moved when Jaycee Dugard was found alive-deeply moved that she had survived and that she brings such dignity to her living today," says Kephart. "I was astonished, too, by the story of Rhonda Patricia Christie, who fought her way back home. One writes fiction and lives inside that landscape, but others-so horrifically-live those stories for real, must live with their aftermaths every single day. I imagined Emmy Rane's story. I imagined Sophie's. For others, the unimaginable is truth. There are no words, in the end, for what the real victims have gone through."

YOU ARE MY ONLY is not the first time Kephart has turned to the real world for inspiration. DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS (Laura Geringer Books: Egmont USA) took the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial as its inspiration. THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE (Balzer and Bray: HarperTeen) built on Kephart's experiences in Juarez, Mexico.

"I am happiest when my work requires me to think far beyond my own life and to imagine deeply into the lives of others," says Kephart, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and chaired the Young People's Literature Jury for the National Book Awards in 2001. "YOU ARE MY ONLY became, for me, an incredibly important story to live inside and to write. There are, I think, far more good people in this world than bad ones. I wanted to give my emergent characters the benefit of others' kindness."

Beth Kephart, the author of thirteen books, is a National Book Award finalist (for A SLANT OF SUN) and a winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Pew Fellowships in the Arts Grant, the Leeway prize, and the Speakeasy Poetry prize, among other things. More about Beth Kephart and her books can be found on her blog, http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/.

YOU ARE MY ONLY
ISBN 978-1-60684-272-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-60684-285-0 (eBook)
Laura Geringer Books: Egmont USA
October 25, 2011