{"product_id":"a-still-small-voice-isbn-9780385334068","title":"A Still Small Voice","description":"A spellbinding novel of love and war from \"a young writer of great promise.\"\u003cbr\u003e-- Paul Auster\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten with a storyteller's grace and a poet's touch, John Reed's powerful first novel is a true adventure of the heart -- at once a passionate love story and a sweeping historical saga set against a vivid backdrop of the Civil War....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe year is 1859 as seven-year-old Alma Flynt arrives in the Kentucky town of Cotterpin Creek to begin a new life. There, Alma will have as friends, neighbors, and benefactors the magnificent Cleveland family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith their sprawling mansion and gleaming thoroughbred horses, the Clevelands are a wonder. But from the beginning, one Cleveland draws all of Alma's attention: the youngest son, John Warren.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlma knew they were meant for each other from their first meeting. But everything changes as war descends on Cotterpin Creek, taking John Warren to battle and sweeping his family into the chaos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAgainst this turbulent backdrop, Alma will come of age. And when the fighting is over, the story of a brave young man riding off to battle becomes a haunting journey of vengeance and redemption. And for Alma, yet another journey begins on the day a tormented young soldier staggers back into her life.\"Reed sets vivid details of the Civil War against the passions of a girl saying goodbye to her battle-bound childhood love and then waiting -- perhaps in vain -- for that love to come home.\"  \u003cbr\u003e-- \u003ci\u003eGlamour\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gorgeous writing and a powerful sense of history ... Reed is a heartthrob of a writer, and \u003cb\u003eA Still Small Voice\u003c\/b\u003e shines with his passion.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Molly Peacock, author of \u003cb\u003eParadise, Piece by Piece\u003c\/b\u003eJohn Reed attended Hampshire College and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, and he was a contributing editor for \u003ci\u003eOpen City\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in New York City. \u003cb\u003eA Still Small Voice\u003c\/b\u003e is his first novel.\u003cb\u003eSpring '52\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was born with very red hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it was not red like a strawberry or cherry. It was red like the red of a sun ripened peach.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was delivered by my aunt at 7 a.m. on April 11, 1852. I can't say for certain if I really do remember that day or if I just have an active imagination. Perhaps it is just something that my people told me  --  but I know that the sun was soft that morning on the hanging curtains, and that there was a glint of it on the wooden bowl which held the warm water and the sponge of my first bath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy mum and dad lived in Richmond, in a cottage with white lilies in the garden and green vines on the brick. Mother's name was Ellen Flynt  --  her maiden name, Penrose. She sewed fancy carrying bags for ladies. Father was Philip Flynt, a cobbler with a shop beside the house. He was a light haired man who matured too quickly, and relied heavily on his wife for picnics. Her eyes were green like mine. That is what I have heard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have heard other things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have heard that my mother once grew a six pound squash in the garden, and that she would not cook it. I have heard that my father was not overly concerned with things of a worldly nature, and that at our table, he always set an extra place for wanderers and travelers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have heard that my crib was made of young birch and that it smelled sweet like a bowl of fruit....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have also heard that of those who came to America from Europe, many had set out to escape some extraordinarily trying circumstances. And I have heard that of those who came from China, many immigrated due to similar conditions (though the Chinese especially seemed to endure more hardships in the years to come, with the building of the railroads across the west). And I have heard from some that the Irish brought cholera. And I have heard from others that the Chinese brought cholera. And still others have told me that nobody is to blame for cholera -- that sometimes it simply grows, like moss on a rock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is a baker, a Mister Joseph Brintons, whose shop was beside the old cobbler's house in Richmond. When I visited there, he told me that when my mother and father were infected with cholera, two soldiers were posted outside of our home. They pushed provisions through the windows, and were given instructions to fire on anyone who tried to enter the house. Mister Brintons does not know under whose authority they were acting, and he is not sure that it was the right thing. But he is also not sure that it was the wrong thing, as nobody else was infected. He told me that in the spring of '56, a doctor named Wickersham stood at the front door shouting instructions to my father, and then to me, when, like my mother, my father became too sick to stand. \"Mix salt and molasses into warm water,\" said the doctor, \"and make them drink it.\" Mister Brintons said that I never fell ill, and that though I was a young girl (just four years old) I dutifully accomplished the doctor's ministrations. He said that by the second day there was a collection of friends and neighbors who stood outside the house holding candles -- gathered in prayer. But that is something I do not recall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy recollection begins with a dying woman that I do not remember knowing. She was pale, and lay under a white blanket on a brass bed. She called me her princess, and asked that I promise to take care of my father, who was downstairs on a bed in the kitchen. I did. He was lying on a mattress on the dining table. I patted him with a damp cloth, and squeezed water into his mouth with a sponge. He had a tea towel over his face that he would not let me remove. He was afraid his breathing would infect me. Before sunrise, he too had rested his fingers in his palm, his last breath expired.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI do remember rather well the loneliness of the time that followed. I have heard it was a day. I have heard it was a week. I have heard it was much too long for a child to be alone. And that, I believe....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMany times, the old cobbler's house on Peach Road has been described to me. It was a two story white house with a brick wall in the back. There was a steep staircase to the second floor. The rooms were narrow. The windows were small. I was told that the bricks of the hearth were re-used to build the hearth of the house that now stands on that lot. And I have seen that house -- but it is simply a stranger's house, and there is nothing to make me feel that it was ever my own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRichmond is now regrown -- reblossomed, like a flower from a bulb. And when I stood in the streets of the rebuilt town, I did not recognize a single pebble -- not a stone, not a shrub, not a tree, not the color of the sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd my childhood seemed a long time ago indeed -- as I stood there on New Peach Road, and listened to the clop of horse hooves on cobblestone, to children tossing beanbags and jumping rope, to merchants selling flowers, and a man selling popped corn. I listened to the sound of hammering and sawing, and the shouts of men rebuilding -- to all those sounds of Richmond from twenty-five years before. And then I heard the echo of ten years before that -- of cannon and minie balls whistling overhead, of mad cries, and the long silences when air set still. And from beyond those years, in all the multitude of sounds between me and my girlhood, I strained to hear the sound of my own soft footsteps, and the sound of my own child's brush drawing through my own red hair....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut all I heard was the sound of horse hooves clop on the cobblestone, of children tossing beanbags and jumping rope, of merchants selling flowers and a man selling popped corn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven so, since that visit, I sometimes imagine my mum and dad -- Mum in a blue dress and a white apron, and Dad with his thin blond hair. They are standing in the slender stairwell with their hands outstretched. I cannot hear their voices, but I read their moving lips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThat's it, Alma,\u003c\/i\u003e they say to me, as I rise from my hands and knees to take my first step....","brand":"Delta","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305398292709,"sku":"NP9780385334068","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385334068.jpg?v=1767720819","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-still-small-voice-isbn-9780385334068","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}