The latest Indigo Spotlight pick, Rita Leganski's The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow, is a luminous debut novel, filled with beauty, grace, and hope. You will carry this story with you long after you reach the end.
By the time Bonaventure is five, he can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops.
One day, Bonaventure's world is shaken by anguished voices he's never heard before. When Bonaventure removes a note from his mother from its hiding place, he opens two doors to the past and finds the key to a web of secrets that holds his family together, and threatens to tear it apart.
Set against the background of 1950s New Orleans, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is a magical debut about the lost art of listening and a wondrous little boy who brings healing to the souls of all who love him in this story of forgiveness and redemption.
The Indigo Fiction blog is pleased to share this blog from the author of this exceptional novel.
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Rita Leganski, on The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow :
For a number of years I fancied myself a writer. I had a flair for it, though not the skills. But that didn't stop me. I wrote books that were little more than novellas and submitted them to agents, convinced every time that this would be THE ONE. Rejection slips piled up. Eventually I had to admit that if I was ever going to learn the craft, I'd have to go back to school. With no clear idea of the toll this would take, I enrolled in university classes.
I was usually the oldest person in the room. I don't like being the oldest anything, but I was on a mission. A full-time job meant I had to attend classes at night, even in winter (which would doubtless be more admirable if they'd been Canadian winters, but Chicago's can be pretty tough). I wanted to quit so many times. Finally, after sticking it out for six years, I had a BA in English Studies and a Masters in Writing. I quit my office job, took a teaching position at DePaul University, and tried to get up close and personal with fiction writing. Little did I know that the battle had just begun.
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow actually started out as a short-story assignment in graduate school. The first question I asked myself when I decided to turn it into a novel was the same question every writer must ask: What is this story about? Here's what I came up with:
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow weaves a tale of heartbreak, guilt, and atonement gone wrong. But then there comes a healing, brought about by a silent and gifted little boy who shares his name with a mystic-turned-saint.
From the moment I put my characters to the page, they were as real to me as if I'd known them forever. At some point they took on lives of their own and surprised me with the way they grappled with self-imposed guilt, and struggled with loneliness and fear and regret, all the while yearning for the light of understanding.
I like to think there are a number of truths woven into The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow. Some have to do with the darker side of the human experience, like grief, judgment, guilt, jealousy, and self-righteousness. But others speak of the very best in humanity; namely, our willingness to forgive and our capacity to love.
Love is measured in joy and in sorrow. In this story, I chose to let sorrow take away Bonaventure Arrow's voice but leave the gift of extraordinary hearing in its place. Through this gift, Bonaventure bears the touch of the Divine. His hearing is not only extraordinary but magical as it draws from the Universe of Every Single Sound in order to take the pain from scars and break the bonds of blame.
Bonaventure hears that which lay behind sounds, and he collects mementos of them: ...the tap water and scissor sounds of wished-for beauty; the gumball-rattle of giant kindness...the joyful, last-sip gurgle from Bixie's Luncheonette; the moist-earth sounds of healing...and the courageous buzzing of a bluebottle fly...
Even though he's just a little boy, Bonaventure Arrow senses that the worthiest sounds are rooted in love, but it is his kindred spirit, one Trinidad Prefontaine, who comes to know love's source. On page 293, speaking in her comforting bayou patios, she says, "...I always did suspect there be mysteries. Lord knows, nobody understand where love comes from if not from inside a mystery."
And that is, perhaps, the greatest truth of all.
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Thanks to Harper Collins Canada and to Rita Leganski for sharing this blog.