Hold Still

In a last-chance effort to help her drug-abusing daughter Ellie begin a new life, introverted English professor Maya Taylor forces Ellie to leave her beloved New York and move to Florida to help a friend with a challenging child. Bad judgment and poor, often nonexistent communication culminate in a fateful event that threatens to tear everyone apart. Maya searches her past and her soul to determine whether she can live with what her daughter has done. Delving into the meaning and degrees of intimacy, "not-rightness," the perpetuation of self-loathing, and legacies of parents to their children, this work moves seamlessly through the present and several pasts to speak to the effects of drug use, promiscuity, and destructive behaviors upon everyone in a family. Reader Andi Arndt's perfect dreamlike tones are so smooth and her transitions so fluid that it could be challenging to keep track of where the listener is and from whose viewpoint a scene is being told.