Silence and Song, Melanie Rae Thon
The convergence of two disparate events—a random murder in Seattle and the nuclear accident at Chernobyl—catalyze the startling, eruptive form of the concluding piece,“requiem: home: and the rain, after.” Narrated in first person by the killer’s sister and plural first person by the “liquidators” who come to the Evacuation Zone to bury entire villages poisoned by radioactive fallout, “requiem” navigates the immediate trauma of murder and environmental disaster; personal and global devastation; and the remarkable recovery of the miraculously diverse more-than-human world.
-Goodreads
Imaginative experience is a tenet of author Melanie Rae Thon’s written work, which examines the subtle, complicated and profound beauties of life through animated, lyrical storytelling. As a professor of Creative Writing and Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah and an author of four novels and three short story collections, Thon has committed her life to this discipline. Her latest book, Silence & Song, sets that vision across borderlands and nuclear evacuation zones.
Goodreads Reviews
3.9 rating based on 14 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 1573660531
ISBN-13: 9781573660532
Goodreads: 25786109
Author(s): Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
Published: 9/30/2015
Immigrants lost in the blistering expanse of the Sonoran Desert, problem bears, bats pollinating saguaros, a Good Samaritan filling tanks at emergency water stations, and the terrified runaway boy who shoots him pierce the heart and mind of Rosana Derais. “Vanishings,” the first story in Silence and Song, is a love letter, a prayer to these strangers whose lives penetrate and transform Rosana’s own sorrow.
In “Translations,” the prose poem connecting the two longer fictions, child refugees at a multilingual literacy center in Salt Lake City discover the merciful “translation” of dance and pantomime.
The convergence of two disparate events—a random murder in Seattle and the nuclear accident at Chernobyl—catalyze the startling, eruptive form of the concluding piece,“requiem: home: and the rain, after.” Narrated in first person by the killer’s sister and plural first person by the “liquidators” who come to the Evacuation Zone to bury entire villages poisoned by radioactive fallout, “requiem” navigates the immediate trauma of murder and environmental disaster; personal and global devastation; and the remarkable recovery of the miraculously diverse more-than-human world.