"The magnificence of Hold It 'Til It Hurts is 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 Hurts will make you hush and wonder."-- Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead "This rich and sophisticated first novel brings together pleasures rarely found in one book: Hold It 'Til It Hurts is a novel about war that goes in search of passionate love, a dreamy thriller, a sprawling mystery, a classical quest for a lost brother in which the shadowy quarry is clearly the seeker's own self, and a meditation on family and racial identity that makes its forerunners in American fiction look innocent by comparison."-- Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award winner for Lord of Misrule "Hold It 'Til It Hurts is 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 Conroy and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white 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 Troy, an experience that will change him forever. Heartbreaking, intimate, and at times disturbing, Hold It 'Til It Hurts is a modern-day odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love, and explores how people who do not define themselves by race make sense of a world that does.
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“This rich and sophisticated first novel brings together pleasures rarely found in one book. Hold It ‘til It Hurts is a novel about war that goes in search of passionate love, a dreamy thriller, a sprawling mystery, a classical quest for a lost brother in which the shadowy quarry is clearly the seeker’s own self, and a meditation on family and racial identity that makes its forerunners in American fiction look innocent by comparison.”
— Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award–winning author of Lord of Misrule
“The magnificence of Hold It ‘til It Hurts is 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 Hurts will make you hush and wonder.”
— Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead“Hold It ‘til It Hurts is the kind of impressive debut that marks its author, T. Geronimo Johnson, as a writer with a career that bears watching.”
— Stuart Dybek, author of I Sailed with MagellanBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
T. Geronimo Johnson received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his MA in language, literacy, and culture from UC Berkeley. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Best New American Voices, the Indiana Review, the LA Review, and Illuminations, among other literary publications. His first novel Hold It ’Til It Hurts was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. He is currently a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Corey Allen, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, has been labeled by artistic collaborators as a “journeyman” and “chameleon-like” actor, relentless in his pursuit of truth and transformation in his work. As a voiceover artist, his talents have been heard in sound plays, commercial copy, industrial and documentary films, and many audiobooks. He is based in New York City and is a founding member of Coyote REP. He holds a BA from the University of California–Irvine and an MFA from the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign.