Silences of the Heart

Plot

Product DescriptionClaudia Carfax, a painter living in Vienna, receives an urgent cable asking her to return to the family home on Vancouver Island, where her elderly Aunt is dying. In a cellar under the house, she comes across an old tin box full of faded letters, and a long buried scandal.From Publishers WeeklyPortrait painter Claudia Carfax, the Vancouver-born heroine of this gently provocative debut, has been living in Europe for 45 years when a telegram informs her that her 93-year-old adoptive mother, Aunt Faith, is dying. On the flight home to Canada, Claudia begins a diary to help her take stock of her life. At 66, Claudia is a restless loner who considers herself in the "Indian summer of her life." But her outlook changes dramatically when she uncovers in her aunt's basement a rusty deed box and in it a cache of old correspondence between her domineering grandmother; Claudia's birth-mother, Antonia; and Claudia's uncle William, who was forced to leave England under a cloud. Drenched in atmospheric detail, the letters describe not only the hardships faced by the immigrants but also family secrets that help explain Claudia to herself. Divided between episodic journal entries and the family letters, this worldly, reflective debut includes photographs of Claudia's antecedents and an intriguing afterword in which Latham describes her own discovery of a trove of old family letters and invites the reader "to guess what is real and how much is fiction." (July) FYI: Latham worked as a stage manager at the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Theatre and was the first woman stage director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorElizabeth Latham had a worldwide career in theatre and opera before she discovered the letters that inspired this book. She has been stage manager for the Edinburgh Festival, Glyndebourne Opera and several European orchestras, and was the first woman stage director at the Royal Opera House in London.From BooklistAn urgent telegram from Vancouver Island summons 66-year-old artist Claudia Carfax from her home in Vienna, days before the opening of her major one-woman show. The diary entries that begin and end this novel tell of her return to her childhood home to care for the woman who raised her. Aunt Faith, welcoming and cheerful though frail, wants Claudia to bring some order to the jumble of family things that fill the house. On the last day of cleaning the last room of the basement, she finds a collection of old letters with her name on it. These letters, the center of the novel, fill in the family history that Claudia never knew and make clear the path she should take for the future. The author uses actual "found" letters as the basis for this first novel. This is a sweet and poignant story of the early settlers' days in Vancouver, family scandal and exile, small victories and lost hopes.Danise Hoover