Learning to Stay

by Erin Celello

Overview

Elise Sabato is proud of her husband, Brad, for serving his country...and grateful when he returns home to her. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered in Iraq has turned him from a thoughtful, brilliant, and patient man into someone quite different....someone who requires more care and attention than Elise can give while working in a demanding law firm. And when Brad ends up on his family’s farm, hundreds of miles away, she wonders where their marriage is headed.

Elise must decide between the life she always wanted and the life she seems to be living…until she finds inspiration in the most unlikely of places: a lovable dog named Jones who teaches her that when the best-laid plans take unexpected turns, sometimes you end up right where you were meant to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451236975
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2013
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Erin Celello is the author of Miracle Beach and Learning to Stay. She was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she also earned an MFA in fiction from Northern Michigan University. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, two young sons, and two unruly Vizslas. She teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Learning to Stay

"[A] gem of a novel...For anyone who has wondered what happens behind closed doors when a loved one comes home from war..."—Lee Woodruff, co-author of New York Times bestselling In an Instant

"A timely novel, but also a novel that speaks to the tides of any marriage, in peacetime or at war."—Joseph Monninger, author of Margaret from Maine

"Riveting and tender...the emotional battle a wife must wage to bring her husband back to her."—Erika Marks, author of The Mermaid Collector

"Inspiring..."—John Shors, author of Temple of a Thousand Faces

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Learning to Stay

"[A] gem of a novel...For anyone who has wondered what happens behind closed doors when a loved one comes home from war..."—Lee Woodruff, co-author of New York Times bestselling In an Instant

"A timely novel, but also a novel that speaks to the tides of any marriage, in peacetime or at war."—Joseph Monninger, author of Margaret from Maine

"Riveting and tender...the emotional battle a wife must wage to bring her husband back to her."—Erika Marks, author of The Mermaid Collector

"Inspiring..."—John Shors, author of Temple of a Thousand Faces

From the Publisher

A work of fiction based on research into the causes and symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injuries sustained by U.S. war veterans, this book also examines the lack of sufficient care available to vets once they have been discharged from service. The narrator of this story is a junior associate in a law firm and the wife of a once-brilliant man who returns from Iraq with both traumatic brain injury and PTSD. From the beginning, we know they were once deeply in love and still are. The book opens with her spending a horrible night waiting to hear if her husband survived an explosion that killed her friend's husband, his commander, and when she is finally told that he survived without apparent injury and will be home soon, she is beyond relieved. But then his sporadic, strange, angry and sometimes violent actions, of which he later has no memory, begin to destroy their marriage. She cannot recognize the man she married in the damaged man who returned. She attempts to get help for him from Veterans Affairs, with disappointing results. Eventually, it is a canine companion who will help him heal. In a conversation guide at the end of the novel, the author discloses that she has had no personal experience with the subject matter of the book. Alternately heartbreaking and heartwarming.

Kirkus Reviews