Hold It 'til It Hurts

"The magnificence of Hold It 'Til It Hurtsis not only in the prose and the story but also in the book's great big beating heart. These complex and compelling characters and the wizardry of Johnson's storytelling will dazzle and move you from first page to last. Novels don't teach us how to live but Hold It 'Til It Hurtswill make you hush and wonder."--Anthony Swofford " Hold It Til It Hurtsis the kind of impressive debut that marks its author, T. Geronimo Johnson, as a writer with a career that bears watching."--Stuart Dybek When Achilles and his brother Troy Conroy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their mother presents them with the key to their past: envelopes containing details about their respective birth parents. After Troy disappears, Achilles--always his brother's keeper--embarks on a harrowing journey in search of his brother, an experience that will change him forever. Heartbreaking, intimate, and at times disturbing, Hold It 'Til It Hurtsis a modern-day black man's odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love and explores how we respond in the wake of disaster. T. Geronimo Johnsonwas born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Best New American Voices, Indiana Review, LA Review, and Illuminations, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Johnson teaches writing at the University of California-Berkeley. Hold It 'Til It Hurtsis his first book.