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Shop nowHeft
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Learn moreA heartwarming novel about larger-than-life characters and second chances
Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career—if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur—a plea for help—that jostles them into action. Through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, Heft tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. Like Elizabeth McCracken’s The Giant’s House, Heft is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.
Liz Moore is a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. A winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize, she is an assistant professor of writing at Holy Family University.
Kirby Heyborne is a musician, actor, and professional narrator. Noted for his work in teen and juvenile audio, he has garnered over twenty Earphones Awards. His audiobook credits include Jesse Kellerman’s The Genius, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, and George R. R. Martin’s Selections from Dreamsongs.
Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.
Reviews
“This is the real deal, Liz Moore is the real deal—she’s written a novel that will stick with you long after you’ve finished it.”
“A suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices.”
“Heft is a work that radiantly combines compassion and a clear-eyed vision. This is a novel of rare originality and sophistication.”
“In Heft, Liz Moore creates a cast of vulnerable, lonely misfits that will break your heart and then make it soar. What a terrific novel!”
“As emotionally appealing as Arthur is, he’s in a dead heat with Kel, the other voice of the novel…By the end we are in love with the characters and just want to see them happy.”
“Moore succeeds in creating an insightful page-turner that seeks to demystify archetypal characters...The writing is quirky, sometimes to a fault, yet original...Moore’s second novel wears its few kinks well.”
“Moore’s lovely novel is about overcoming shame and loneliness and learning to connect. It is life-affirming but never sappy.”
“Endearing.”
“Only a hardhearted reader will remain immune to Kel’s troubled charm.”
“This deeply touching novel shows that you can choose your family. In Heft, writer-musician Liz Moore alternates Arthur’s story with Kel’s to create a stunningly sad and heroically hopeful tale of two men from fractured families and the women—a high school athlete, a pregnant cleaning lady—who, miraculously, love them. This is a beautiful novel about relationships of the most makeshift kind, about bonds that go beyond the biological. It’s also about how, sometimes, even the deepest wounds can be healed by the simplest, smallest acts of kindness.”
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