When Dora Bittencourt says goodbye to Nick Cohen, she believes she’s returned to São Paulo for good.  For Nick, plagued by his Grandfather’s death and a crumbling family unwilling to discuss the past, Dora was the one bright spot.  Then Dora’s Grandmother delivers her own surprise...  Unbeknownst to them all, the ties that bind them run deeper than expected.   Thrown headfirst into the past, Dora and Nick must relive their Grandparents lives before the Great War.

--

Inspired by interviews with survivors of the odyssey from Europe to Ellis Island to Brazil, HOLD BACK FLIGHT is a lyrical, family saga across three continents.  Told through letters and photographs, it portrays families wrestling with long-suppressed secrets.  Tapping into the myth of Apollo and Daphne, it forces us to ask the most essential questions: how did we get here?  What remains when we’re gone?

HOLD BACK FLIGHT, is a 61,000-word novel that follows the survivors of the Jewish exodus from Europe to the Americas. Reviewed by Publishers Weekly’s Critics Report as an “engaging intergenerational take on the immigrant experience” whose “prose has strong rhythm and utilizes the epistolary form to great effect,” it utilizes nested, emigration stories to “create a strong sense of attachment in readers to each of their stories.”