Keeper of the Night Book

A powerful new novel from the award-winning author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town.

Isabel’s mother died peacefully. At least that’s what Isabel likes to think since no one will talk about the truth. But the truth has a way of revealing itself at night. Ta`Ta sleeps curled up on the floor right where Mama’s body was found. Olivia wets her bed and wakes repeatedly from nightmares, and Frank starts carving his anger into his bedroom wall. It’s up to Isabel to help her family get beyond the pain and loss—to be the keeper of the night. But who will be there for Isabel and help her through to the other side?

Set on the lush island of Guam, Kimberly Willis Holt has written a painfully beautiful story about a young woman’s struggle to protect her family after suicide hits home.

The New York Times

Given the subject matter, Keeper of the Night could easily have been a treacly coming-of-age novel. But Kimberly Willis Holt, who won a National Book Award for When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, has created an endearing, complicated narrator in Isabel; she manages to sound both lyrical and like the eighth grader she is. — Nora Krug