Catch You If You Fall

Catch You If You Fall is a coming of age story about the power of friendship between a young devout closeted Muslim struggling with the pressing demands of his family to enter a prearranged marriage and a resilient Catholic boy whose sincere yet misguided efforts to help result in a dramatic falling-out that sets the two best friends on a painful path to self-discovery.

For years, Hashim has tried to drown his homosexual longings in prayers and piety while his mother plots his future marriage. Today, he turns eighteen, and on a grant from the Mosque’s scholarship fund, he will soon be heading to an Ivy League university. As Hashim attends the Friday prayers, he learns his mother has set a date for his engagement to the niece of the local Muslim strongman. Now Hashim has only twenty-four hours to find a way to call off the engagement without invoking the wrath of his mother and his intended fiancé’s family. Unable to bear the thought of entering into a doomed marriage, Hashim turns to his best friend Alex, who doesn’t know Hashim is gay. When Alex’s plan to help his friend backfires in the worst possible way, the two young men must face their deepest fears or stand to lose all they hold dear.

Catch You If You Fall is the book one of The Rise Up Trilogy about three best friends on the threshold of adulthood. Before Hashim, Alex and Maryam can find their place in this world, they must come to terms with their past and learn to confide in each other as they are confronted by intolerance and ignorance, corporate greed and governmental inaction that threaten to rob them of their future. Inspirational, harrowing, intense and deeply moving, this trilogy presents a ray of hope amidst terrible hardship, misfortune and loss.