Stepping Off

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.

Jordan Sonnenblick is the author of the acclaimed Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, After Ever After, Notes from the Midnight Driver, Zen and the Art of Faking It, Falling Over Sideways, and The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two children.