Angie, seventeen, is a star pupil and swimmer with a seemingly assured future – when she has a psychotic breakdown. This haunting and affecting debut novel explores not just Angie’s inner turmoil but the collateral damage it inflicts on her family as they evolve and adapt to the crisis in their midst. Definitely a book worth reading and talking about.
';A teenager's psychotic break unhinges her family in this sure-footed first novel.' The New York Times Book Review A New York Times Editors' Choice Winner of the Kate Chopin Writing Award Winner of the Ken/NAMI Award One day, Angie Voorsterdiligent student, all-star swimmer, and ivy-league bound high school seniordives to the bottom of a pool and stays there. In that moment, everything the Voorster family believes they know about each other changes. Katharine Noel's extraordinary debut illuminates the fault lines in one family's relationships, as well as the complex emotional ties that bind them together. With grace and precision rarely seen in a first novel, Noel guides her reader through a world where love is imperfect, and where longing for an imagined ideal can both destroy one family's happiness and offer them redemption. Halfway House introduces a powerful, eloquent new literary voice. ';An eloquent literary performance... [A] memorable first novel with a uniquely powerful grace.' The Boston Globe