In her debut mem­oir, Stay, Julie Fin­gersh explores her iden­ti­ties as moth­er, sis­ter, daugh­ter, wife, and writer. High­ly read­able and hon­est, the book fol­lows Fingersh’s jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with­in the demand­ing land­scapes of fam­i­ly life and trauma.

Stay is com­posed of three inter­con­nect­ed per­son­al sto­ries. The first exam­ines Fin­ger­sh’s role as the moth­er of chil­dren on the cusp of adult­hood. This already fraught peri­od of life is made even more dif­fi­cult when her daugh­ter sud­den­ly devel­ops a debil­i­tat­ing chron­ic ill­ness. All the while, Fin­gersh wres­tles with the ten­sion between giv­ing her chil­dren inde­pen­dence and ensur­ing that they have a strong sup­port system.

In the sec­ond thread of the book, Fin­gersh recounts her long-held dream of reignit­ing her writ­ing career — a goal she put aside for years. Read­ers learn about her strug­gle to over­come cre­ative blocks and pri­or­i­tize her pas­sion amid the pull of fam­i­ly demands. There’s a sub­tle irony in hear­ing her ques­tion if she’ll ever ful­fill her dream; after all, the words on the page prove she ulti­mate­ly does.

The third and per­haps most haunt­ing sto­ry cap­tures Fin­ger­sh’s rela­tion­ship with her broth­er, whose men­tal ill­ness has pro­found­ly shaped her life. She tog­gles between past and present, unfurl­ing his trag­ic sto­ry bit by bit. Through frag­ments of mem­o­ry, she push­es past feel­ings of guilt and secre­cy to reveal the dif­fi­cul­ties of grow­ing up with a sib­ling whose errat­ic behav­ior brought both chaos and love into her life. Her brother’s pres­ence is one of the most touch­ing aspects of the mem­oir. Fin­gersh describes her mem­o­ries of him with an aching tenderness.

As Fin­gersh braids these parts of her life togeth­er, she reflects on how fam­i­ly trau­ma has affect­ed her, and grap­ples with the last­ing scars of her brother’s ill­ness and death. Her com­pas­sion­ate yet com­plex por­tray­al of him will res­onate with read­ers, offer­ing them insight into the unique bur­den of lov­ing some­one in pro­longed crisis.

Stay is both a unique per­son­al nar­ra­tive and a uni­ver­sal­ly relat­able reflec­tion on fam­i­ly and rein­ven­tion. It’s a mov­ing trib­ute to the strength it takes to hold onto one­self in the midst of fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions and emo­tion­al upheaval.