Introduction

It's her destiny to die young. The man who loves her can't live with that.

Promise, a talented young singer with a terminal illness, is counting on fame to keep her memory alive after she dies. Porta is an aging sorceress and art collector in search of immortality.

When Promise inexplicably survives a series of freak accidents, Porta believes that she may hold the key to eternal life.

Enter Chase, an autistic artist who falls in love with Promise and fascinates her with his mysterious visions and drawings.

Soon, all are plunged into a confrontation over the mystery and the cost of something even greater than eternal life...eternal love.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

In the silence of night, sounds of life have a greater chance of being heard.
One of these sounds woke Chase Ellis from deep sleep at a heavy predawn
hour. His rousing was sudden and full, so that without any bleary transition
he found himself aware of his own thoughts. He lay on his back under a
rhythmic ceiling fan. The blades made their circuit and caused the fan’s light
chain to tink against a glass globe. This familiar noise usually rocked his mind
into rest. Something else had disrupted him.
The shadows of his father’s room possessed all their usual shapes,
though Chase evaluated them as being darker than usual by twelve to fifteen
percent. The saturated dimness was due to the time, a full three hours
before his intuitive rising with the sun. He needed no clock to know this.
A vivid scene unfolded in Chase’s mind: On the other side of the world,
where his father had slept and awakened for the past ten years, the sun blazed
over a desert afternoon. There were no trees in that dry land, only people, who
moved slowly like Tolkien’s Ents. The hot light shone on his father, whom
Chase envisioned as one of the world’s most enduring trees. Pinus longaeva
had been dated to thousands of years, and in some cases a tree stayed firmly
upright long after its death.
Chelsea said their father was certainly dead by now, but in Chase ’s
thoughts the man was green and bursting with seedy cones, and so Chase
could not agree with her.
He heard the noise again. He lifted the corner of the blanket and peeled
it off his body, then did the same with the sheet. He sat up, then pivoted
so his feet swung together over the edge of the bed. The stiff fibers of the
carpet brushed his toes.
By the timing of the overhead chain, which hit the globe precisely
on each second, Chase counted one minute and seven seconds of waiting
before the sound came a third time: the rattling of sticks in a tin can. It came
from the room across the hall, which had been Chase’s as a child before
his father was deployed, before Chase ’s drawings took over that space and
Chase took over his father’s room.
Chase walked through shadows without turning on the light, because
he did not need it and was not afraid. He knew the width of every passage
and the protrusion of every sharp corner, the location of every shoe and
book on the floor. He walked out of the room and through the hall, past the
closed door of the bathroom. The rattling ceased.
His entrance into his old bedroom moved just enough air to lift the
edge of a drawing tacked to the wall. The movement created a mild papery
rustling among his other sketches—like leaves in a spring breeze—before
sighing back to rest. This was his welcome.
Chase crossed the room and turned on the desk lamp, which leaned over
a spiral-bound book of black drawing paper. The light bounced off his white
T-shirt. The red fabric of his basketball shorts turned shiny and felt weightless
against his skin. He did not play basketball, but he liked the texture of the
pants. The brilliant bulb transformed the uncovered window behind the desk
into a sheet of black glass, as black as the paper Chase used for his drawings.
On either side of the wide obsidian, built-in shelving reached all the way
up to the ceiling and all the way out to the adjoining walls, and each shelf was
lined with cans and tin cases. These contained stumps and brushes and sticks
and tools and pencils. White pencils. White was the only color Chase used.
But not only pencils. The cans and tins were filled with many white substances
suitable for drawing: water-soluble ink pencils, oil paint sticks, oil
pastels, white-charcoal pencils and sticks, pastels and pastel pencils, colored
pencils, woodless aqua pencils, Conté crayons in which graphite had been
mixed with clay, white-tinted graphite pencils, and china markers. He had
a tailor’s marker, blackboard chalk, a few paperless white Crayolas, stage
makeup, cornstarch and talc (which could be liquefied and applied with the
nub of a quill pen), and also bars of soap.
Chase listened to the shelves. He owned 210 containers, 105 on each
side of the window, fifteen items on each of the seven tiers. He knew the
contents of each. He waited for the one that had awakened him.
On the right side of the window, third shelf from the top, the sixth canister
from the left began to hum. The former Progresso soup can, stripped
of its blue label, contained a broken stick of quarter-inch General’s white
charcoal, one General’s pencil, two Derwent Graphitint pencils, and a rubber
blending stump. The hum increased to a rattling in earnest, a vibration
that shifted the can toward the brink. Chase watched it fall.
The contents scattered across the carpet at his feet, and the broken stick
of charcoal chipped on the lip of the can. The utensils begged for him to
draw. Chase bent to collect each item and returned everything to the can.
As he stooped, a rustling of paper called out to him. Holding the can,
he straightened, then pivoted to scan each wall in the room. He thought the
sound came from there, from one of the hundreds of drawings tacked up in
overlapping rows.
These were pictures he had made of trees. White, ghostly trees on dark
sheets. For starters, Chase had drawn every species known to the Pacific
Northwest: the cascara buckthorn, with its wavy-edged leaves and pronounced
veins; the Pacific dogwood, covered like snow in the white bracts
that framed its tiny flowers; the towering black cottonwood, its seeds hanging
from strings like pearls on a woman’s necklace; quaking aspen, the heartshaped
leaves fluttering. When he’d exhausted the region he’d moved on to
other species of the country, the continent, the world.
None of his art appeared out of order. He rotated until his toes pointed
once again at the desk. Chase lowered the soup can to place it on the surface,
but stopped. The black drawing pad that had been closed now lay open, a
fresh slate.
This was highly unusual. Still holding the can, he pulled out his chair
and sat. The Mi-Teintes pastel book was bound with wire at the top and
contained sixteen sheets of 9 x 12 black textured paper. Each of these was
separated by a translucent sheet of glassine. Chase stared at the exposed
page. He heard the rhythm of the fan chain in the other bedroom.
At the top of the page a letter appeared, an A, as in the beginning of the
alphabet, as in A is for alder or acacia or abele. The letter did not appear all at
once, but as a tilting line that rose to the right, then fell down to the right, then
was crossed in the middle, written by an invisible hand with an invisible pen.
Not a pen. A soft white wax. A china marker. Chase lifted his eyes to
his shelves, seeking a flat Hershey’s collector’s tin with a hinged lid on the
left side of the window. Bottom level, third from the left. He retrieved it and
flipped open the top with one thumb. All nine of his markers were inside, in
Sharpie, Dixon, Berol, and Sanford brands. What instrument was making
these marks, and how?
On the paper, a new letter had appeared after the A, following a space.
An l, lowercase, and then an o. Bold strokes, firm and authoritative. N. Chase
sank back into his chair, candy tin in one hand and soup can in the other,
mesmerized. G. The letters formed words and the words formed a phrase.
A longing fulfilled is
Familiarity came over Chase like sunshine, a comforting assurance that
everything about to happen was good.
Chase set the containers next to the sketchbook, then lifted the page
to see whether the words were being applied from the backside or through
the desk. Nothing. On the front, the script continued to flow. He lowered
the page and ran his fingers over the fresh words, which had taken on the
texture of the paper. The silky wax and dry pulp were braille to Chase. His
fingertips tingled.
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. Porta wants to live forever; Promise wants not to be forgotten when she
dies. How is their yearning for immortality universal among humans?
How do people you know express this desire for eternity in the ways
that they live and in the choices that they make?
2. Promise believes that fame is the only path to being remembered by the
world at large. Do you agree? Why do fame and celebrity have such a
magnetic pull on the human heart?
3. What caused Porta’s vision of the boy-sculpture speaking to her?
4. What was true about Porta’s claim that art has power to speak into a life?
What was false about it? How was Chase’s art different from Porta’s
insofar as it held meaning for others?
5. If Promise were a friend who asked you why she didn’t die at any of the
times when it seemed she should have, what would you say to her?
6. What attracted Zack to Promise? What was it about her that challenged
his own despair? Which of her qualities and abilities might be her most
valuable as a human being?
7. Why did Michelle ’s death trouble Promise more than any of the other
catastrophic events going on at the time?
8. Chase’s autism causes him to interact with people in ways that fall
outside of social expectations. Why does his behavior cause people to feel
uncomfortable? Does the difficulty lie with Chase or within themselves?
Explain your answer.
9. How did Chase’s understanding of people as trees allow him to connect
with others? What do people and trees have in common?
10. Chelsea made it her life ’s focus to protect Chase. How did her sheltering
help or hurt him? How did Chase’s relationship with his sister inform
Chase’s love for and desire to protect Promise?
11. How would you live if you believed you were going to die at a young
age? How would you live if you believed you were never going to die?
What would be the same as or different from the way you live now?
12. If you compared your life to a tree ’s, what kind of tree would you be?
What kind of tree would you rather be, if you wish for something
different?

Weblinks

»	Author Erin Healy's web site “Healy, who is best known for her suspense novels cowritten with Ted Dekker (Kiss;Burn), tries her hand at writing a suspense novel [Never Let You Go] tinged with elements of the supernatural that will appeal to readers who like to be on the edge of their seats.”—Library Journal “Healy’s first solo novel [Never Let You Go] is exciting and engrossing. The adventure-filled main story and a heart-pounding supernatural spiritual element are woven together seamlessly to create a winning combination sure to appeal to readers.”—Romantic Times, 4½ stars “Heart-pounding suspense and unrelenting hope that will steal your breath.”—Ted Dekker, New York Times best-selling author “Healy sets up such a brutally hopeless scenario, readers will wonder if there ’s any way out for Lexi. It takes a long time, but miracles can and do happen in this faith-based thriller. Fans of Ted Dekker will appreciate Healy’s chilling story of the dangers on the road back to hope and faith.”—Shelley Mosley, Booklist “[Never Let You Go] keeps you glued to the pages until the very last.” —Tosca Lee, author of Havah: The Story of Eve
»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Connect with Erin Healy on Facebook
»	Follow Erin Healy on Twitter
»	Email Erin Erin would be happy to call-in to your book club as well as meet with clubs in the Colorado Springs and South Denver area. Email her via this link.

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book