Just Until

Hannah must choose the impossible—put her nephews into foster care so she can stay true to her dream, or take them on and lose everything she’s worked so hard to achieve.

17-year-old Hannah Lynn has just one goal: to get out of Evans Beach, Maine. It’s where she lost her mother to cancer. Where her estranged sister, Pauline, fell apart before moving out. Where her father, Larry, holds court as a local legend who once played for the Red Sox. Hannah has never fit in, but that doesn’t matter now that she is finally on the cusp of escaping to her dream college.  

Then her life is turned upside down when Pauline’s two sons are taken by the state, leaving Hannah and Larry the only people standing between the boys and the child welfare system. Her father wants to provide them with kinship care and promises that it will only be for a little while, just until Pauline gets back on her feet. But Hannah knows nothing is that simple when it comes to her troubled older sister.

When her father’s health declines Hannah must make a soberingly adult decision: is she willing to give up her dream and raise her nephews on her own or can she let them be placed in the foster care system? 

Drawing on his clinical psychology background, Moldover challenges readers to face some of life’s most difficult questions through the eyes of an unforgettably complex heroine. Unflinching yet ultimately hopeful, Just Until is a heart-wrenching tale of the weight some teenagers carry when no one else can do it for them—one that will linger with readers long after the final page.

A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year

Joseph Moldover is the author of Every Moment After, a 2019 Massachusetts Center for the Book "Must Read." His short fiction has appeared in Stonecoast Review, MonkeyBicycle, One Teen Story, Typehouse, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. He works as a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, where he lives with his family. You can visit him at josephmoldover.com.