Keep Her: A Novel

by Leora Krygier

Destiny doesn’t factor into seventeen-year-old adoptee Maddie’s rational world, where numbers and scientific probability have always proven to be the only things she can count on as safe and reliable. Still, Maddie is also an artist who draws on instinct and intuition to create the collages she makes from photographs and the castoff scraps she saves. But when her brother falls in with a Los Angeles street gang, Maddie loses her ability to create art. Then fate deals Maddie a card she can’t Aiden, a young filmmaker she meets when a water main bursts inside a camera store. Aiden is haunted by the death of his younger brother, and a life-changing decision he must now make—whether or not to keep his baby daughter. Caught in a whirlpool of love and loss, Maddie and Aiden find that art and numbers, a mission to save endangered whales, and a worn-out copy of Moby Dick all collide to heal and save them both.

265 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 6, 2016

About the author

I think I wrote my first story at the age of eight, a micro-autobiography. Micro? Because, well, how much can you say at the age of eight? But I guess I was hooked. I also love to take photos with my cameras and iPhone, which is always snug in my back pocket.

For me, every photo has a story, and every story is a snapshot.

I'm the author of "When She Sleeps" (Toby Press) a New York Public Library Selection for “Best Books for the Teen Age,” and about which Newsweek said, “Krygier’s luminous prose transports the reader.”

I'm also a former Los Angeles Superior Court judge and the author of "Juvenile Court: A Judge’s Guide for Young Adults and their Parents" (Scarecrow Press).

I live in Los Angeles with my husband. When I'm not not writing, I love to go to the beach, walk the Santa Monica Mountain trails, and snap lots and lots of photographs.