THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
Aramenta Lee's peaceful emigre life in Paris is shattered by a terse wire summoning her home to Mobile, Alabama: AM DYING COME HOME MOTHER. Aramenta's willful, manipulative mother has driven one daughter and a son to miserable, untimely deaths. Only Aramenta escaped, through a good and happy marriage to Lieutenant James Darcy. But when James died overseas in combat and Aramenta lost their baby at birth, she left home for a new life in Paris.
The sole heir to a family fortune, Aramenta determines to sell the mansion, settle the estate, and return to Paris. But she is thwarted. In the subbasement of the old house, Aramenta Lee discovers a family tragedy and her mother's final macabre legacy. Self-imprisoned in the wine cellar for thirty years is the son she had thought dead -- a mute recluse terrified of the outside world, and his own mother. He fiercely resists her attempts to communicate, choosing to retreat to the isolation of the cellar, which has shielded him for so long.
When all her own efforts fail, Aramenta turns in desperation to the deaf handyman, Virgil. Virgil is intelligent and perceptive, but isolated by silence. He yearns for the day when Aramenta will speak to him in the only language he knows, the sign language of the deaf, and dreams that she will favor him with her money.
Ultimately it is Virgil who brings about the novel's stirring climax, as the battle of wills of Aramenta, her son, and Virgil resolves itself in a gripping upbeat finale.
Aramenta Lee's peaceful emigre life in Paris is shattered by a terse wire summoning her home to Mobile, Alabama: AM DYING COME HOME MOTHER. Aramenta's willful, manipulative mother has driven one daughter and a son to miserable, untimely deaths. Only Aramenta escaped, through a good and happy marriage to Lieutenant James Darcy. But when James died overseas in combat and Aramenta lost their baby at birth, she left home for a new life in Paris.
The sole heir to a family fortune, Aramenta determines to sell the mansion, settle the estate, and return to Paris. But she is thwarted. In the subbasement of the old house, Aramenta Lee discovers a family tragedy and her mother's final macabre legacy. Self-imprisoned in the wine cellar for thirty years is the son she had thought dead -- a mute recluse terrified of the outside world, and his own mother. He fiercely resists her attempts to communicate, choosing to retreat to the isolation of the cellar, which has shielded him for so long.
When all her own efforts fail, Aramenta turns in desperation to the deaf handyman, Virgil. Virgil is intelligent and perceptive, but isolated by silence. He yearns for the day when Aramenta will speak to him in the only language he knows, the sign language of the deaf, and dreams that she will favor him with her money.
Ultimately it is Virgil who brings about the novel's stirring climax, as the battle of wills of Aramenta, her son, and Virgil resolves itself in a gripping upbeat finale.