Hold Still

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books for 2026!

One of Publishers Weekly's Big Fall 2026 Books from Independent Publishers!

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.

Ben Ehrenreich is the author of four previous books, most recently, of the New York Times Notable Book, 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.