I couldn’t stop thinking about the kids. What does it feel like to go to school each day knowing that you can’t go home? What is it like to know you no longer have a front door to call your own? I began spending time in Chicago’s shelters, and met some wonderful kids who I’ll never forget. – have been losing their homes each year, and the numbers seem to be rising. It began with a shocking truth I ran across in the news: thousands of families in Chicago – and well over a million across the U.S.

Hold Fast took four years to research and write. I’d walk past a clock and see that it was 1:11 or 3:33… Hmm.

Once this odd pattern became a part of Hold Fast, it popped up all the time in real life. I'm playing with a pattern I noticed on the digital clock in our kitchen. What does the word mean? Does 4:44, a measurement made of fours but shown by three, mean a family of four is still four, even when one is gone? Can a soul hide in a three that belongs to four? No one could remember seeing the young man that afternoon… He had vanished three blocks from home. When a squad car arrived at the scene minutes later, the street was deserted. Suddenly: a squeal of brakes, a shout, and a thud wheels spinning through the dusk a blue bicycle crushed beneath a truck a shopping bag spewing green peas, tomatoes, and oranges across snow.Īt 4:44, the police received a call. On this particular January afternoon, gusts battered the city and a temperature of zero nipped at flesh and stone alike. Light and warmth seemed gone for good mountains of grey snow and sheets of ice destroyed the geometry of sidewalk and street.

It was the bitterest, meanest, darkest, coldest winter in anyone's memory, even in one of the forgotten neighborhoods of Chicago. As dreams chase reality in a fearless yet sparkly search, 11-year-old Early Pearl will take you on a ride not easily forgotten.

You will meet Dash, Sum, Early and Jubie … and many others living in a large city shelter. Now stir in an old Langston Hughes book on rhythms, the Chicago Public Library's huge downtown building, a family of four that find themselves in the midst of a spiraling nightmare, and the 2003 Antwerp Diamond Heist, the biggest in history. The mystery begins with a bizarre accident on a deserted, wintery street in Chicago.

Blue balliett