Hold It 'Til It Hurts

A riveting debut—a black Afghanistan veteran in search of his lost brother amid the chaos of Hurricane Katrina.

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.

Publication date: August 28, 2012

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6.1 x 8.8

Page count: 340 pages

ISBN: 9781566893091

T. Geronimo Johnson was born in New Orleans. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Best New American Voices, Indiana Review, LA Review, and Illuminations, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Johnson teaches writing at University of California–Berkeley. Hold It ’Til It Hurts is his first book.

“Transcendent contemporary American literary fiction, a rich and passionate story rewarding enough to be read again.” 

—Kirkus, starred review

“As does Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Toni Morrison, [Johnson] connects characters through the spirit and the body.”

—American Book Review

“These complex and compelling characters and the wizardry of Johnson’s storytelling will dazzle and move you from first page to last.”

—Anthony Swofford

“A meditation on family and racial identity that makes its forerunners in American fiction look innocent by comparison.”

—Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award Winner of Lord of Misrule

“This novel raises—and answers—big questions, even as it maps the tough lives of men in cities under harrowing stress.”

—Gambit

“[Johnson's] ability to precisely describe the depths of a young man inoculated against both love and violence shocks us, again and again.”

—ZYZZYVA

“I was deeply moved by Hold It ’Til It Hurts, and impressed by the ambition of the novel.”

—Roxanne Gay, The Rumpus

“A smartly-written and stylish meditation on family, love, masculinity, race and self-identity in modern-day society.”

—Newark Journal

“This masterfully written book, filled with trenchant observations and unafraid of tenderness, marks Johnson as a writer to watch.”

—The San Francisco Chronicle