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Monday, August 10, 2015

The Distance Between Lost and Found






by Kathryn Holmes


This past Friday, August 7, 2015, Marcy and I posted our answers to Kathryn’s debut novel The Distance Between Lost and Found. Today, you get to read Kathryn’s favorites.

Awesome answers, Kathryn! We can’t wait for our readers to read the novel. And hopefully to give us a few of their favorites, too.


1) What is your favorite line or paragraph from the novel as it relates to the main character’s development and/or growth?

Page 190-191:

The rain starts: sharp, hard drops that sting Hallelujah’s arms. It feels like an attack. Like they let their guard down, and now nature is back with a vengeance.

But Hallelujah breathes in deep. Limps along. Tries to think of her skin as armor. She’s not the same person she was two days ago. That girl ran from rain, fell down mountainsides, scrambled in the mud, blind and gasping and scared.

This girl, this new Hallelujah, is still scared, but she watches her footing, and she holds on to Jonah and Rachel instead of pushing them away. She watches the rocks grow closer. For once, she knows where she’s going.


2) What is your favorite chapter ending or cliffhanger?

Hard to do without spoilers! I love this final image from page 105:

Jonah pokes at the fire with a stick. His shoulders are hunched. He looks young. He looks vulnerable. He says it again: “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Hallelujah repeats. She hesitates for a second, then puts her arm around him, just across his back. It feels both totally wrong and completely right—to be sitting here, now, under an open sky, raw and injured and exposed, to be comforting Jonah, to be apologized to. She doesn’t know if it feels wrong or right to him, because they don’t talk after that. Jonah adds a few more branches to the fire. After a while they lie down, closer this time, careful not to disturb Rachel, whose sleep exhales puff white and frosty in the mountain air.


3) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?

Since DISTANCE spends so much time with only three characters, it’s hard to choose between Jonah and Rachel! Jonah has my heart. He means well—but he screwed up, big time, and he’s trying desperately to make up for what he did. Rachel makes me laugh. She knows just what to say to lighten the mood. She’s a caring friend. Hallie needs them both on her journey, and as their author, I love them equally. J


4) What is your favorite line or paragraph of description?

Here’s one of my favorite descriptive passages, from Page 89:

The view is incredible. A 360 panorama. If this were a movie, the camera would sweep around and around, taking in their wide eyes along with the mountains rolling into the distance. There would be a swell of strings, a breathless final swoop before the dialogue, soft and awestruck.

It’s not the tallest peak. Not by a long shot. They’re at the top of what can’t even really be called a mountain, not with everything else around. There are mountains visible behind other mountains, rising up behind valleys, peeking out, hills upon hills upon hills. The green mounds look so much softer and gentler from a distance. Almost like a blanket that someone left rumpled. Or that someone’s still sleeping under.

And there are so many trees. So many shades of green. Sunlit green and shadowed green. Grass green and moss green and pine green and the greens of every variety of leaf.


5) What is your favorite line of dialogue?

I’ll pick a lighter moment, from Page 118:

“We have to maintain order, so we don’t go all Lord of the Flies.”


Congratulations to Kathryn on her debut novel, The Distance Between Lost and Found!


MY BIO:

Kathryn Holmes grew up in Maryville, Tennessee, where she was an avid reader and an aspiring writer from an early age. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and piles upon piles of books. A graduate of The New School’s MFA in Creative Writing program, Kathryn works as a freelance dance journalist, among other writing gigs. The Distance Between Lost and Found is her debut novel.


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