This book is a 2006 Cybil Award Nominee for YA Fiction.
When her sister Rebecca died, it was like a spark had been extinguished. She’d been waving from behind a cafe window the last time Leila had seen her, and then — nothing. And it’s impossible for Leila to accept.
There’s been a lot that Leila has had to accept. She’s her father’s second family — there was another wife before her mother, and two other daughters. Leila found her way to that other wife, found her way past the reserves of her much older sisters, found a distant kindness in eldest sister Clare, but found in Rebecca a true friend, one who told her she’d know herself when she really fell in love. There was so much left that Rebecca had to teach her… and so much left that Leila wanted to say. So why did Rebecca kill herself? What happened? Using the same dogged determination that she applies to her dyslexia, Leila strives to find out. And along the way, life — in the form of school struggles, job, and family — just keeps happening.
Leila’s struggles through the year after her sister’s death are chronicled in Stay With Me, a novel about another deeply gifted and loving family. Garret Freeman Weyr is a writer who isn’t afraid to deal with sensitive topics, and this is another of her unique and thoughtful novels.
