Publication Date: September 1, 2022
When 15-year-old Ginny Scanlon touches the photo of a mysterious woman, she suddenly finds herself able to play piano and she sets out to find out how and why — without freaking out her widowed mother. She enlists the aid of her math-whiz best friend and her unwitting new boyfriend to learn how she became endowed with talents she didn’t have before — including doing complicated mathematics, exercising photographic recall, and performing other uninvited skills.
She soon becomes overwhelmed with managing her new talents and activities, but her investigation continues. What she uncovers shatters her sense of identity.
As much as Ginny wants a logical reason for the bizarre zaps and zings that touch her and change her, she knows it is something more mysterious. Eileen P. Duggan certainly knows how to give voice to this teenage character in Touch.
Ginny is an average high schooler with one best friend and a home with few frills since her mom is doing the best she can after Ginny’s dad died in an accident. Maybe because of the close relationship Ginny has with her grandfather, Pops Daddy-O, she develops an interest in vinyl records and vintage clothes. Ginny enjoys sketching and sewing. She considers this the beginning and end of her skills and talents.
Ginny’s mom is determined to visit a particular estate sale, so Ginny looks around for her favorites: records and clothing. She gathers a few things but is drawn to a painting of a pianist in a beautiful, classic black dress. She touches the painting and… is suddenly not an average teenager.
She is filled with questions about the painting, the house, and the family who lived there. Actually, as she ponders these, a curiosity about her own family awakens.
Duggan writes with such an ease in voicing the teenage Ginny that I quickly could conjure up the character and hear her voice. The story is original, mysterious, and heartwarming. This Young Adult novel could easily fit into any book collection of those loving a unique storyline.
Beginning with a mere graze of a photo, a young woman acquires new talents in a sensational way in the novel Touch. 
Eileen P. Duggan, a lifelong St. Louisan, is a freelance writer, editor, journalist, piano teacher and dabbler in other trades too numerous to mention. A former newspaper editor, she has written for several St. Louis-based and national publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in piano pedagogy and has written music reviews for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a music column for the West End Word. She is the managing editor of a quarterly neighborhood newspaper, The Griffin, serving St. Louis’ Central West End. She also judges annual competitions for the Illinois College Press Association and other college press associations.
Many of her published pieces, along with original writing, are available on her blog, *Versatiliosity*, at Dugganpubs.wordpress.com.
She is the author of three music-related novels, THE NOT-READY-FOR-JUILLIARD PLAYERS, APRIL FOOLS DAILY and TOUCH. For book guides, see Dugganpubs.wordpress.com/fiction/
**FIRST PLACE WINNER of the 2023 National Federation of Press Women’s Communications Contest, for TOUCH, in the Young Adult Book – Fiction category.
Thank you so much for the great review!