Synopses & Reviews
Thirteen-year-old Flutie lives on the edge of an enormous quiet that she wants to transcend. Her family's life in Western Oklahoma, her father's job repairing old cars and tractors, her brother's betrayal, and her mother's indifference are all parts of a story Flutie wants to tell if she can just find the words. In a library book, Flutie reads the myth of Philomela, whose tongue was cut out by her sister's husband so she cannot tell that he raped her. As Flutie faces the poverty of the the land and the turmoil of her family, she feels she is also without a tongue. She is not just afraid to speak, she is afraid of being. She especially fears her own imagination which produces visions of deer and a spirit woman that she doesn't understand. For a time, Flutie loses herself in drinking and drugs and a friendship that turns oppressive. But through her inner resources and the influence of a kind neighbor, she claims her own voice.
Synopsis
Thirteen-year-old Flutie lives on the edge of an enormous quiet that she wants to transcend. Her
Synopsis
There is a little brick house in an isolated valley in deepest Wales. To this idyllic retreat come Eloise and Simon, a young couple escaping the city. Eloise has led the way, inspired by the teachings of her muse, Moonbird, who holds that Mother Nature looks with benign concern upon her human children and sees to their well-being. At first all is well for Eloise and Simon and their cat M'sieu. Eloise spends her days sewing old-fashioned night dresses and petticoats which she sells to an exclusive shop in town; Simon does woodworking and odd jobs for the nearby farmers. The garden, the woods, the hills, the silence are all as Moonbird had promised. Or almost. For one day, four men, incongruously dressed in city suits and street shoes and carrying briefcases, walk up the country lane to the little house, and things begin to happen. Uncanny, inexplicable things. Things even Eloise's mother, Clare, and Clare's best friend, Miriam, who arrive from London, can't make heads or tails of. The two older women bicker and fuss, trying to decipher the younger woman's increasingly strange behavior. And then Eloise returns from a walk in the woods with a baby in her arms...