
The Weight of Silence
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Narrated by:
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Jim Colby
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Eliza Foss
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Cassandra Morris
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Andy Paris
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Therese Plummer
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Tony Ward
Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered.
Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor.
Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.
©2009 Heather Gudenkauf (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLCListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
- Edgar Award Finalist, Best First Novel, 2010
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Not everyones cup of tea
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A true love left unfulfilled, a child's selective mutism, an alcoholic parent, and domestic violence make for a good deal of gloom and drama. Yet there are amazing bright, wonderful parts of the book, especially the relationship between two little six year old girls and the way in which brother Ben becomes a young hero in more ways than one.
I rather liked the narrations -- each reader giving voice to a different character. All seemed very appropriate, except Ben's voice could have/should have been a bit more adolescent.
The prologue of this story wraps things up with a perfect bow -- almost too perfectly I think. Most events of this type don't have happy endings across the board for all those involved. Some wounds simply don't heal without deep, enduring scars and real life is quite a bit more complicated than this author conceived.
Nevertheless, a good read.
An Unsettling, Engrossing Family/Community Drama
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And now they are both missing.
Calli's abusive, alcoholic father, Griff, is supposed to be on a fishing trip with his friend, Roger, but when Roger is finally located, Griff isn't with him.
Calli's mother, Antonia, and her brother, Ben, as well as Petra's father, Martin Gregory, and the local deputy sheriff, Loris Lewis, who was Antonia's first boyfriend, each get their own alternating chapters, unfolding the story from their viewpoints. Calli's is the only one told in third person, past tense, which is a nice touch.
What the reader, or listener, knows that the adult characters don't, is that the girls aren't together, and they are both alive. There is no guarantee they will remain so, and much reason to fear they won't. Griff is the prime suspect, and whether or not it's him, there was another little girl who previously disappeared, and was found, eventually, murdered and abused.
I found the characters compelling, and the story engrossing. There is one scene, that we see, ultimately, from the viewpoints of Antonia, Calli, Martin, and Lewis, in every case stopping at telling us that Calli spoke just one word, and not telling us the word until the fifth telling of it. That was maddening, entirely too much of drawing out that one particular detail to no real narrative purpose, but that was, for me, the only major storytelling failure. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this book.
Flashbacks further enrich the story, helping us understand how the characters got to this point, and the complex connections among them. Griff is an abusive, alcoholic husband and father, and some of Antonia's choices may be hard to understand for people unfamiliar with how abuse affects the victim's ability to see themselves as even having the right to be treated better. Abused spouses don't leave because their ability to make that decision and act on it has been damaged by the abuse. They feel shame and guilt, too often, instead of the anger that would allow them to get out. (This is aside from the fact that help in getting away from a dangerous spouse is often far less available than those who've never experienced it fondly believe.)
Overall, a good, rewarding story.
Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
A compelling, emotional story of two missing girls
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Gudenkauf's BEST !
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Great book.
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Overall I'd recommend this book..
slow start but really gets good towards the end
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It took me a bit to warm up to it. But then...
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Sad story about a broken family
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Good read
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Recommend
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