Dancing in the Silence, Book 2 in World Without Sound series

By Linda Sammaritan

Description:

It’s 1967 and Debbie Hansen hates her life. She has to leave all of her New York friends, move to California’s Mojave Desert, then back to New York, all because her dad will be sent to Vietnam for a year. And three out of five pilots never come home. Debbie could be fatherless before she starts high school.

Her only comfort? She’d have her old friends to lean on if the worst happened. Wrong. When Debbie returns to her hometown, she finds the group moved on without her. She tries to reconnect, but their message is clear—NOT interested.

Living under the shadows of war, Debbie and her brothers mask their fears by acting out in anger toward each other until a final showdown erupts into near tragedy. Meanwhile, Mom forbids Debbie to teach Krista sign language. “Experts” say deaf children need to speak. Debbie defies them.

Krista is the only one who’s happy. She blossoms in her world without sound. Before Dad returns, if he returns, Debbie needs to choose—she can keep struggling to earn a place with the “in crowd,” or she can learn to dance with her sister in the silence.

Book Takeaway:

When families pull together even in the worst of circumstances, they can thrive.

Why the author wrote this book:

The World Without Sound Series is loosely based on my childhood experiences growing up with a deaf sister in a military family. My students found some of my stories fascinating and they wondered what it was like to be unable to communicate with a sibling who could not learn language.