Holly's books...

A Little Company

A novel by Holly Gaskin

 

It’s 1935. The Great Depression casts a somber shadow over the entire country.

In the vast, isolated woods of Adams, New York, young Pauline lives in terror, a prisoner in her own home. In the past few months, she has lost both her mother and her younger brother… to unnatural causes. Left in the dangerous clutches of her alcoholic father, Pauline’s hopes for escape grow dimmer with each passing day. Worst of all, nobody besides Poppa even knows she’s alive.

Every day, Pauline prays to be rescued. But she is also terribly lonely. When she wishes for “a little company,” it arrives in two unlikely forms. They- and her vivid, unrelenting nightmares- begin to unravel traumatic memories that Pauline has suppressed… Memories that, while painful and horrific, may be her only key to freedom.


 TRICKED

A Young Adult novel by Holly Gaskin


It is Halloween night in Watertown, NY. Eleven-year-old Patrick Jacobs is excited that, for the first time, he’ll be allowed to go Trick-or-Treating without his adult supervision. With his Dad deployed in Iraq, and his Mom busy with a new baby, it seems like a no-brainer that he’d be permitted to roam the neighborhood with three of his buddies. His mother’s only stipulations are that he take along his six-year-old sister, Mariah, and that he stick to the “safe” route that she lays out for them. But peer pressure from his friends, and the lure of a spectacular “Halloween House,” slightly off the beaten path, tempts Patrick to break the rules. Before he knows what’s happening, Mariah vanishes. What started out as a night of innocent fun, turns into the most terrifying, and maybe the last, ride of his life.




“Finding My Father: A Search For the Truth In The Face of Alzheimer’s” is Holly's first non-fiction work. Holly and her father, Adolph, were separated by divorce when Holly was a child. Adolph’s move to another state, followed by her mother’s remarriage, made it difficult for them to keep in touch. Complicating matters, was the fact that her maternal family wanted her to have nothing to do with him. When she reached adulthood, Holly made up her mind to track her father down. She never expected that it would be so difficult. Her search was further complicated by her father's frequent bouts with homelessness. 

 Thirty years from the last time she saw him, Holly finally located her father. Their reunion was bittersweet, as he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. Holly feels compelled to get to know her father all over again, before the Alzheimer's steals him away.

 Diane Carbo, Besides being a compelling personal story, Finding My Father contains interviews with experts in the Alzheimer's, and Elder Care fields, including Cheryl Chow and Richard Taylor, Ph.D.