Stepping Off

by Jordan Sonnenblick

Two worlds under strain

$17.71 USD

~~$29.52 USD~~ $17.71 USD

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Two worlds under strain

Jesse Dienstag’s life is divided between New York City, where school and daily pressures await, and a Pennsylvania vacation-home community that has long felt separate from ordinary life. As his parents’ relationship falters, that imagined refuge becomes harder to hold onto. The story’s timeline spans the summer of 2019 into the early days of New York City’s COVID shutdown in March 2020, bringing family upheaval and a wider disruption into the same coming-of-age frame. Its central tensions include divorce, competing attachments, and the collision between a teenager’s private hopes and circumstances he cannot keep apart.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

Teen and young adult readers interested in stories about family separation and changing relationships.
Readers drawn to coming-of-age fiction set across New York City and a Pennsylvania vacation community.
Readers interested in fiction that places personal upheaval alongside the onset of the COVID shutdown.

Themes

Family separationComing of ageRomantic attachmentCompeting worldsCOVID-era disruption

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Jesse Dienstag's favorite sweatshirt says, "The real world isn't real." That's the slogan of the vacation-home community in Pennsylvania where his family has always spent every vacation and weekend for as long as he can remember. In the summer of 2019, as Jesse is about to enter his junior year of high school in New York City, he desperately wants to believe the slogan is true. For one thing, the two girls he loves -- equally and desperately -- are in Pennsylvania, and all the stresses and pressures of his daily life and school are in New York.

But when his parents stop talking to each other, it gets harder and harder for Jesse to maintain his dream life in Pennsylvania. And when Covid shuts New York City down in March 2020 just days after Jesse's mother leaves his father, Jesse's worlds collide.

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