What the Silent Say
What the Silent Say is a fictionalised account of facts Emerson Ford gleaned through letters written within her own family, specifically those written by her great uncle Raymond to his brother, Jimmie, Ford’s grandfather. The novel follows the family from early 1937 South Carolina through the WWII years.
Raymond and Jimmie are very different but extremely tight as brothers. Raymond is mechanical and clever, where Jimmie has no confidence that he can ever follow in his brother’s footsteps. When Raymond ships out to train with the army, Jimmie flounders, until he too decides to take his life into his own hands and train as a gunner, despite lack of support from his overbearing father. Young Evelyn originally meets Raymond in 1937, when she is 14, and they become reacquainted in 1941. Despite Raymond’s many protestations of love, Evie turns him down repeatedly. Her mother has soured her to the idea of ever falling for a man in the forces, but eventually she succumbs, finding that she truly loves this brave man who she is confident will return to her after he is sent to Guam in 1944.
Ford’s writing feels very personal, as it should when an author writes of family, and she succeeds in bringing a tragic story to life, introducing readers to the brave men who fought in the Pacific Rim towards the end of WWII. The approach is not epistolary but is a fictionalised account of Raymond and Jimmie’s actions on the war front, one in the skies and one on the ground, and the family back home desperate for news. This poignant, graphically detailed account is one of bravery and sacrifice and the long-term fallout of war.
