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The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow: A Novel
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow: A Novel
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow: A Novel
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The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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A magical debut novel from Rita Leganski, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is the tale of a mute boy whose gift of wondrous hearing reveals family secrets and forgotten voodoo lore, and exposes a murder that threatens the souls of those who love him.

Bonaventure Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But he was listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings. By the time he turns five, he can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops. He also hears the voice of his dead father, William Arrow, mysteriously murdered by a man known only as the Wanderer.

Exploring family relics, he opens doors to the past and finds the key to a web of secrets that both hold his family together, and threaten to tear them apart.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s New Orleans, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is a magical story about the lost art of listening and a wondrous little boy who brings healing to the souls of all who love him.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateFeb 26, 2013
ISBN9780062113771
Author

Rita Leganski

Rita Leganski holds an MA in writing and publishing and a BA in literary studies and creative writing from DePaul University. She teaches a writing workshop at DePaul's School for New Learning and was a recipient of the Arthur Weinberg Memorial Prize for a work of historical fiction.

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Rating: 3.9318181 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is truly magical, and I'm so glad that I took the time to read it. It's unlike any other book that I've ever read. Little Bonaventure Arrow is a wonderful creation and even though there is a lot of magic, mystery, unexplained happenings, supernatural occurences, voodoo and hoodoo in this book, he is so realistic and so very loveable. The setting is a little place called Bayou Cymbaline in the 1950's. I love the deep south references throughout the book and the glimpse it gives into the rich Creole and Louisiana culture. I love the characters that live in this book. I just loved the book for the wonderful story, and for the sense of hope and happiness that permeates throughout. This is a book that reminded me of why I am such a bookaholic. Bonaventure is born from sadness, but there is so much hope and promise emanating from this one little boy. His father was shot down by an apparent stranger just before Bonaventure makes his entry into the world. This sudden violent act forever changes Bonaventure's mother and grandmother, and shapes Bonaventure's life. Bonaventure cannot speak, but his ability to hear and understand is beyond any normal human's. Even though he's only seven he manages to determine what the old buried secrets are that have hampered his mother and grandmother from living a normal, happy life. Bonaventure, along with a wonderful black woman called Trinidad, work together to heal these old wounds and to provide hope for these two women. A truly magical story that will leave me forever touched. If you love to read, then you absolutely must read this enchanting book.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I will give the book 1 star for effort on the author's part. I imagine it takes a lot of effort to write a book, but I honestly did not enjoy the book. It is rare for me not to finish reading a book. I tried several times to make it through this book and gave up on page 136. My book club chose this book to read for the month of August as it had some great reviews and the storyline sounded unusual and intriguing. Last night we had our book meet; 6 attended, 2 finished reading it, and all 6 felt it was convoluted, and simply just boring. A disappointment, but oh well, we tried.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this book as part of the She Reads book club. I was excited to read a book I hadn’t picked myself, but also a little nervous- the story seemed a little different. I was floored by Rita Leganski’s debut novel. From the very first page, I couldn’t put the book down.Newly born Bonaventure arrow is doesn’t make a sound, even though he is frightened by the sudden change in his environment. Instead, he listens. He hears strange and different sounds, and then the heartbeat of his mother. So begins the extraordinary life of Bonaventure, who doesn’t speak, but can hear everything, including his dead father, who speaks to him, and guides him along his life. Bonaventure hears EVERYTHING- grass growing, clouds, sunshine. He can also hear secrets. Along with his father, and healer Trinidad Prefontaine, Bonaventure helps his family heal from old hurts and secrets.The backdrop of magical New Orleans, along with voodoo and the mystical, really pulled me in. I love stories of New Orleans and the surrounding area. Rita Leganski did an wonderful job, not only of describing the place, but also the fell of this wonderful city. The author also has an amazing way of describing the things Bonaventure hears-“Within a year, Bonaventure Arrow could hear the flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops.”I am usually a fast reader, but found myself deliberately going slow with this book, to appreciate the wonderful way with words the author had. Bonaventure isn’t the only one described so well. His Grandmother Roman, a hypocrite with only her own well being in mind, is a source of tension throughout the story. ”Adelaide Roman was certain of her soul’s perfection, and so felt comfortable pointing out the iniquities committed by others. To that end, she brought religion with her wherever she went, including her job at the United Staes Post Office.”Altogether, this is a wonderful story about hope, magic, love, and forgiveness.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've been hearing things - good things - about Rita Leganski's debut novel The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow. And, after the first few chapters I have to agree wholeheartedly. I have my favourite genres, but sometimes there's something about the description of a book or the opening lines that grabs me and I just know that this is going to one of those special books that stays with me. Until I lend it out - because I'll definitely be recommending this one."Bonaventure Arrow didn't make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But the child was only listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings because everything had suddenly changed. His silence gave pause to the experts who examined him; here was a curiosity beyond their expertise. (They could never have explained Bonaventure anyway because there is no scientific word for miraculous.) They didn't know that through his remarkable hearing he would bring salvation to the souls of those who loved him."With those few opening pages, I felt like I was sitting down to hear a storyteller spin a magical yarn of what could be... or who knows - what is. I was entranced by the idea of a boy who could hear what inanimate objects were saying, their stories, hearing the unspoken sorrow and sadness, the joy and pain of people's lives, the sound of everything."Bonaventure Arrow had been chosen to bring peace. There was guilt to be dealt with, and poor broken hearts, and atonement gone terribly wrong. And too there were family secrets to be heard; some of them old and all of them harmful.I really don't want to say much more about the plot - it's just so much better to have it unfold before your own eyes.The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is not a book to be rushed through; instead it should be savoured and enjoyed. Leganski's writing flows so easily. Her prose are beautiful and lyrical, and I often went back to read them a second time. The love between Bonaventure's parents was beautifully depicted. I very much enjoyed Leganski's descriptions of what Bonaventure hears. It's a nudge to remind us to stop and listen - and not simply hear. The book is set in 1950's New Orleans and I was fascinated by the setting, culture, description and exploration of the city, but also of hoodoo, voodoo and Catholicism. Leganski weaves a unique and magical tale exploring love, loss, guilt, forgiveness and redemption in an utterly unique and magical voice. A fantastic debut and an easy recommendation. See for yourself - read an excerpt of The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow. Fans of Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen would enjoy this novel.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Okay book, I'm pretty sure it was me and not you. Listen, I saw you and you were beautiful, and I wanted you right away. I couldn't resist your allure, your magical realism. I had to have you in my life. Now, though, I realize that I should have gotten to know you better first, before we committed to one another in any meaningful way. You really are beautiful inside and out, but just not in a way I can fully appreciate.

    What I can say is that the writing in The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is beautiful. Simply lovely. Leganski's writing style plays into the feeling of magical realism perfectly, and the way she puts together sentences has a magic all its own. Her debut proves her writing chops, and I would be willing to consider reading whatever her next novel is, solely on the strength of her prose.

    The book's opening captured me immediately, reminding me a good deal of Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" mixed with the southern charm of Sarah Addison Allen. The idea of a child, mute but intended for some big purpose, seems fraught with possibility. Unfortunately, the story then jumps back and spends almost the whole of the novel in the backstory of his mother and grandmothers. I never did find myself especially interested in any character but Bonaventure Arrow himself, and he didn't turn out to be much of a focus in the novel.

    Bonaventure, in addition to being silent, has super hearing. He can hear everything, from falling stars to his father's ghost. Supposedly, this will allow him to do something quite special and live up to his saintly name. His counterpart of sorts, in the sense that they both have special abilities, is Trinidad, a much older black woman. She sees visions, Knowings, and practices hoodoo, which allows her to help people with natural herbs. Her hoodoo is remarkably similar to the effects of Vianne's chocolates in Chocolat. These elements are fantastic, but I don't feel like they served any actual purpose to the plot whatsoever. They seem merely to be there to make the setting more vibrant.

    Actually, the only real plot seems to involve Bonaventure's father. William dies before Bonaventure's birth, shot by a mysterious, insane man. His mother and wife are trying to allay their guilt, the former by trying to figure out the identity of his killer. Meanwhile, William, in some sort of purgatory, watches over his family, and communicates with his son. The whole book seems mostly to be about him moving on to the next world. Rather than magical realism, this is much more of a ghost story.

    What lost me, most heartily though, was all of the Christianity in the novel. No, it's not preachy, but it's incredibly boring. As I said, I couldn't be bothered about the backstory of the grandmothers, and their pasts are all wrapped up in their fervent religious beliefs. Every character isn't Christian, and it doesn't seem like Leganski's trying to say anything about it, but I just had no fucks to give about any of it. Like so much else in the novel, I just don't see why I had to sit through all of that when it doesn't seem to have had a big impact on the plot overall.

    The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is a gorgeously-written novel, but suffers from a weak plot that tries to do too many things without tying them together. I might read more Leganski someday, but this one did not work for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reading this book was like tasting an exotic food I've never had before. You have that split second where your taste buds are indecisive, where it could go either way. But this book was rich and delicious. Lush and lyrical. Sometimes the lyrical prose was a little overpowering, trying too hard, and over-the-top, yet other times I read and reread a line because it was so beautiful. I highly recommend this story. Characters are well thought out and well drawn. It's a different kind of story. Magical in a believable way. It beckons you to lay aside your cynicism and believe in good magic, pulls you in. Heartwarming and heartbreaking at times. Great read for summer on the porch with the cicadas buzzing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Here's the quintessential sultry, Southern novel of the summer with a dash of supernatural. Bonaventure Arrow is born silent and in the South with lots of family trauma all around him. His silence speaks volumes to the way we keep our skeletons deep in the closet and our trauma roam around like fleas. His gift of silence as well as the author's rich spiritual nuances add to the characters journey to forgiveness and transformation. My only critique is there are some moments that seem sappy, and I can see how this might turn into a "you'll like it or hate it" type novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bonaventure Arrow never made a sound from the time he was born. It was the 1950s and his mother Dancy gave birth to him only after her new husband was murdered. They moved in with her mother-in-law, as Dancy didn't really get along with her own mother, and they both tried to come to grips with William's death. But, William was still hanging around and though Bonaventure couldn't speak, he had super-hearing and did talk to his dad. It was ok. I'm not a big fan of magical realism, so I'm sure that's part of it. It was kind of a slow-moving, though I was curious to find out the identity of William's murderer (though I did guess it ahead of time). I also enjoyed the setting, as much of it took place in New Orleans.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    2.5**

    Before he is born, Bonaventure Arrow’s father is murdered by a mentally disturbed man known only as “the Wanderer.” His mother’s unspeakable grief affects Bonaventure’s development – he is born mute, but with hyper-acute hearing. He can hear earthworms moving through the dirt and a bit of dust falling off a moth’s wing. He can also hear the stories that inanimate objects tell – the sound of steamships comes from a wooden crate marked “port of New Orleans,” and the sounds of gunshots from a jar of sassafras. And he hears the sadness and secrets of his paternal grandmother’s house.

    Helping him make sense of these sounds are two extraordinary characters – the ghost of his father, William Arrow, whom only Bonaventure can hear, and the family’s cook, Trinidad Prefontaine, who is a Creole woman knowledgeable about hoodoo and root work.

    Leganski’s work is hard to describe. It has elements of Southern gothic, as well as the supernatural and magic. When I first heard that the central character is a mute child, I immediately thought of David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. But this novel is nowhere near so fine a work of literature as Wroblewski’s. I think Leganski got too caught up in the “magical” quality of Bonaventure’s extraordinary hearing. She spends way too much time crafting beautiful descriptions of his abilities – and they are beautiful. But, how does reading about a dust mote’s story of being carried across the Himalayas on the foot of a goose help this story? The answer is it doesn’t. These type of passages (and there are many) showcase Leganski’s imagination and ability to write creatively, but they interfere with the story. They do nothing to develop the characters or advance the plot. They are unnecessary distractions.

    There is a nugget of a great premise here. I like how she used the innocence of a child to help the wounded adults around him heal. I liked that Bonaventure was surrounded by people who loved him and nurtured him – maternal grandmother notwithstanding. I wish she had spent more time developing the story, and less time expounding on Bonaventure’s unusual hearing abilities. I was interested and caught up in the plot at the beginning, but then felt she would never get to the point. By the time the identity of William’s killer was revealed I just didn’t really care. Had I been her editor, I would have deleted close to a hundred pages. I would have deleted the maternal grandmother’s storyline and expanded on his teacher’s growing relationship with his mother. I would also have advised her to make more use of Trinidad, who doesn’t join the family until half-way through the novel.

    I get that Leganski was going for an ethereal quality, but I think she went too far in that direction and forgot the story.

    NOTE: I don't usually "round-up" when I give a 1/2 star rating, but the quality of Leganski's writing shows promise, so I did in this case.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There is something absolutely spellbinding in this book. The words flow like music and wrap the reader in a world made of laughs, love, tears, death and poetry, a touch of magic that never becomes silly or overpowering but which captures the imagination and reminds us of all the wonder in the world.The story is beautifully crafted with the right amount of suspense and character development; the secrets are alluded to without overwhelming the plot and when revealed are evoked with delicacy and care - these are not for shock value but rather to confirm the feelings and further knit the relationships.Absolutely enchanting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When I first began reading this novel I was delighted by its disregard for a common reality. Rita Leganski’s prose slips through that narrow space between the seen, and the unseen but suspected world, as fluid and sinuous as an asp.

    From the back cover: Bonaventure Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But he was listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings. By the time he turns five, he can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops. He also hears the voice of his dead father, William Arrow, mysteriously murdered by a man known only as the Wanderer. Exploring family relics, he opens doors to the past and finds the key to a web of secrets that both hold his family together, and threaten to tear them apart.

    I was excited by this book when I opened it. The element of magical realism was not something I’d encountered or expected in a selection from Shereads (for whom I read and reviewed this book). Most of the selections so far have been a more traditional women’s lit, so this one offered a welcome changeup. Unfortunately, for me, I felt the story took too long to get started, and the climax when it came, a vivid forced abortion scene involving characters who are each either insane (Calypso), self-serving and the very epitome of banal evil (Emmaline) or hateful and murderous (Suville—the abortionist) was both the best writing in the entire book, and a terrible let down in its transparent preachy-ness.

    “Follow me,” she said, leading mother and daughter into a small room that held a bed draped in very white sheets and a small table that was draped in its own white cloth. Upon that table there rested a tray, and upon the tray there rested what looked at first glance like a piece of shiny cutlery. That is not what it was at all. It was a curette, a small instrument for cleansing a surface. That is the definition Suville offered to her clients if they asked; personally, she thought of it as a blade and loved how nicely it fit in her hand. Whenever she held it or even just caught a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye, Suville always thought the same thing: how feminine, how powerful, how elegant and deadly.

    Really nice writing. The deceptive purity of the “very white sheets” draping the table where the abortion will take place; and the image of the difference in how the abortionist describes the curette to her clients, contrasted with how she really thinks of it, and how she enjoys (loves) using it with murderous intent. But this darkness comes to us on page 306, of an otherwise slow tale, and is an abrupt departure in tone.

    Suville came to the room and began to bathe her patient, pouring water over Letice’s outer womb. Suville had entered a trance of her own, one in which she saw herself as the reincarnated John the Baptist. But Suville was nothing of the kind (a bit of author intrusion here as a judgement is delivered). Suville Jean-Baptiste brought no babies to life; Suville Jean-Baptiste took babies to death.

    Again though; still pretty good writing. But, there’s a feeling of now getting to the point—no pun intended.

    There’s a lot of religion sprinkled throughout the novel. It dips into Voodoo, Hoodoo, Evangelical Christianity, and Catholicism (did I leave any out?) as if straining toward a homogenization to avoid any prejudice. But none of it feels emotionally honest; more like ingredients added following a recipe, in an attempt to cover all the bases.

    Some of the characters are very well done: The evil, mail-opening, homo-hating, weirdo Adelaide Roman is fun and awful, and awfully fun. And the character of Bonaventure is as lovely as the saint he is named after. It is in the character of Bonaventure that the reader gets a glimmer of what feels like authentic spirituality, through both the unforced descriptions of his awareness of beauty, and his gentleness.

    This writer’s strengths: Miss Laganski’s prose is often charming, especially her imaginative descriptions of the beauty of Creation. Her power though, came through strongest, and most honestly, when she wrote about her characters’ inner darkness.

    Who will enjoy this book? Readers who enjoy magical prose, unconstrained by accepted reality. Those who like a lot of backstory and going into how a character became who they are.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rita Leganski's The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is a wholly wonderful novel. It's an addictive, powerful, and touching story. HarperCollins always delivers when it comes to publishing high quality adult fiction, and The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is no exception!The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow delves into the dark and frightening unknowns of our world. The characters are at the mercy of the power of the universe, of God, of religion, and of our own human weaknesses. Bonaventure is born a mute, Dancy is a lonely, guilt-ridden single mother, Adelaide is a religious fanatic... there are many tragedies and trials to endure in life. The best we can do is learn to live with our lot, to always do right by our family and friends, and to press on with life.The story is beautifully written, filled with colourful characters that you immediately fall in love with. Leganski constructs a world so real and tragic, it's easy to lose yourself in her writing. I loved how the story shows how we affect other people over time and space. Leganski shows how we can never full anticipate how our actions will alter the course of the future. From page one to the gripping conclusion, I was hooked by this moving story. Rita Leganski is a masterful storyteller. I finished this novel days ago, but the ending has stuck with me. This book more than exceeded my expectations. Rita Leganski has given the world a brilliant and magical debut. I highly recommend this novel!4 Stars
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This would have been a magical 200 page book instead it was a 378 page Oh Get On With It book. I actually think we could have skipped Grandma Roman all together and not lost a thing. I also didn’t need to know every little thing Bonaventure could hear it was plenty when he told his dad I heard a worm blink today and such, the author could have just added a few of the big ones into his conversations with William and it would have been plenty.BUT…I loved Bonaventure he was an amazing little boy and if the author had went with less is more this probably would have been a 5 star book but as it is it will be much less than that. I also enjoyed Trinidad and wish there would have been a little more of her. As I said above I think this book could have done with major editing and I think if they would have concentrated on the people living in the house (including Trinidad) and skipped Adelaide all together it would have tightened up the story and made me care more. There were parts of this book that shined for me but by far the majority of it didn’t, I’d say if you like lots of descriptions and pretty prose you may like this book as for me it fell flat.2 ½ stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Thank you , thank you Rita Leganski for writing this wonderful and magical novel, In a week that has seen so much tragedy in so many places, involving so may people, I was sorely in need of a little magic. This novel features some wonderful people, not least little Bonaventure Arrow who cannot speak but can hear things other people cannot. The prose is like liquid, it flows fluently and freely. Yet all is not sweetness and light, it is New Orleans in the 1950's, a place of root and voodoo and hoodoo and some strange going ons. There are family secrets, religion and sadness and one particular dark happening that will tragically effect the future. Ultimately there is a secret and once that is found there will be forgiveness and love and new chances at life. I often see authors asked what one novel did they wish they could read again for the first time. I wish I could start this one over but alas. I may have found one of the few books I can see myself reading again.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a really neat story, kind of an adult fairy tale, life lessons type book. I like how the good and bad of people, life, religions, societies, social classes are shown. The main point in my opinion is acceptance, forgiveness and facing the truth.Bonaventure would come to know that life is not always made of beautiful sounds, that too many sounds make cacophony, and that every voice matters.

    He would come to understand that there's a difference between the will of God and the will of man, that the acts of one person affect the lives of others, and that God reaches out when it all goes wrong.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lovely writing. Bittersweet story. Excellent audio narration

Book preview

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow - Rita Leganski

Dedication

For Paul

and for

The Pelican

Epigraph

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.

—William Shakespeare

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I: Bellwether

Gifted

The Time She Simply Thought of as Before

This Turn of Events

The Wanderer, As Yet Unknown

The Newlyweds

The Voices Were Very Encouraging

Left, Right Closer, Closer

A Privilege Allowed Restless Souls

As If to Keep from Breaking

From Whence She’d Come

The Other Grandma

Arrival

The charge nurse at the asylum

The Meaning of a Name

Mardi Gras Sentimental

Sacrament

A Voiceless Baby and His Lonely Mother

Time Went on with No New Findings

Taking Up the Prophecy

An Eloquence of Face and Hands

Mission

The Wanderer could still walk

Rarer Secrets

The Ways of a Silent Boy

The Wanderer continued to live

The Abundant Good Graces of His Silence

Up Next to a Eucalyptus Tree

Accusation

The Wanderer came down

The Wagon

Powerful Wangas and the Loup-Garou

In a Piece of Time Too Small for a Clock

Staring into Liquid

As for Dancy

Man to Man

They offered The Wanderer

The Bluebottle Fly

On the Late Afternoon of a Fine Summer Day

Sassafras and Spanish Moss

The Wanderer was allowed to dig

Like Ripples on the Surface of a Pond

Friends

The Voices of Crayons

Marking Time

Peace on Earth and Mercy Mild

The Wanderer thought he’d

Part II: Innermost

The Pinkerton

The Sight of Her Brokenness

The Sickness Brought About by Ignorance

Eugenia Babbitt read aloud

Hearing Extra

Drawing Near

The Age of Reason

Good Afternoon, Miss Babbitt

The Scary Story Champion of Southern Louisiana

The Handshake

A Promise Made of Chains

The Wanderer recalled the white

Voodoo and Hoodoo and the Sweet By-and-By

Mémoire d’Archive

The Dreams of a Bright and Ambitious Girl

The Sins of the Mother

A Reasonable Supposition

Remains of a Shared Past

You Need to Give Me a Little More to Go On

July 14, 1957: The Sounds of Sorrow and of Angel Blood

Those Things She Found Spiritual

The Wanderer stopped eating

One of Us Here Knows the Rules: July 19, 1957

Can I Get a Witness?: July 20, 1957

Ladies’ Choice

Part III: Evensong

Things began to change in Bayou

Acknowledgments

P. S.: Insights, Interviews & More . . .

About the author

About the book

Read on

Advance Praise for The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part I

Bellwether

1949–1956

Gifted

BONAVENTURE Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But the child was only listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings because everything had suddenly changed. The water chant was gone, as was the oxygen whisper and the comforting beat of his mother’s steady heart. Where were the voices? Where were the dream tones? Where was the hum of the ever-present night? Bonaventure didn’t know what to do with all that loss. The world he’d known had vanished. Been swallowed up whole by harsh light and shocking coldness and a terrible, hurtful, clamoring dissonance. He shivered when the doctor handed him over, but he gave no hearty newborn cry. Instead, Bonaventure listened hard as he could for that missing steady heart.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

The heartbeat was lost in a lot of other sounds now, but was strong enough to bring forth a calmness that allowed him to be wide-eyed and hopeful. His mother, Dancy Arrow, thought she heard him cry from a long way off, but that was nothing more than a trick of the anesthesia.

Bonaventure stayed like that, all wide-eyed and hopeful, and continued to keep his silence. People worried about it right away. Except for Dancy. She was too taken up with what else was missing to grasp that her baby was quiet all the time.

Bonaventure settled into the hospital nursery, finding comfort in his swaddling blankets and coziness in the confines of his bassinet cocoon. He matched voices to touches, and footsteps to nurses, and formed a great fondness for the ticking of clocks. His silence gave pause to the experts who examined him; here was a curiosity beyond their expertise. (They could never have explained Bonaventure anyway because there is no scientific word for miraculous.) They knew nothing of Bonaventure’s rarefied hearing, the acuity of which was an extraordinary grace and an unearthly symptom of the mystery behind his silence. They didn’t know that through his remarkable hearing he would bring salvation to the souls of those who loved him. Nor did they know that Bonaventure’s silence was full of sound that came to him in the same way it had come to the universe when space expanded to form nebulae and novas and all things celestial out of a divine and loving pulse.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

All told, Dancy and Bonaventure spent a week in the hospital, as mothers and babies did in 1950, and then they were discharged. It had been determined that they were hale and hearty and that this silent situation was not the end of the world.

Mrs. Arrow, the doctor said, you have a fine healthy boy, though we are greatly concerned that he has yet to make a sound. You must pay special attention to the matter and come back to see me in six weeks or so.

To which Dancy smiled and said, Thank you. I will, and though her heartbeat stumbled, she said no more than that. In the deepest places inside herself she was joyful and jubilant and over-the-moon about her quiet baby boy. It was just the numbness that kept her subdued, like a sleepwalker who puts one foot in front of the other on a journey she won’t even remember.

Luckily, Bonaventure heard one small sound of his mother’s dormant joy, and that small sound was enough.

The nursery at home on Christopher Street in Bayou Cymbaline held all the receiving blankets, diaper pins, and talcum powder anyone could want, as well as a rocking chair right next to the window. It was an altogether fitting place for twinkling stars and lullabies and dishes that ran off with spoons—there was no hint of unusual circumstance, no visible trace of tragedy.

Bonaventure managed the breathing sounds that all infants make, but they had nothing to do with larynx or vocal cords or deliberate intentions. Nevertheless, his mother was in love with those unintended noises and with everything else about him: the translucency of his eyelids and the lilting look of his brows, his tiny feet and toes, each perfect little nail, the plumpness of his sweet bottom lip. Sometimes a look passed over Bonaventure’s face while he slept, as if he’d seen something spectacular in his dreams, and Dancy would try to imagine what it could possibly have been.

Six weeks went by and Bonaventure maintained his silence. Without even realizing it, Dancy gave up listening in favor of watching and did the best she could.

Has he made any sound at all? the doctor asked. Any crying, any fussing?

Well, no crying, but he does fuss some, Dancy told him.

How do you mean?

I mean if he’s hungry he scrunches up his face and kicks his legs and stretches his arms up over his head. And if he’s wet or he’s messed in his diaper, he squirms around until he gets cleaned up.

The doctor lowered his head and smiled the kind of smile one puts on pity. Then he gave that smile to Dancy and said, We need to do some tests.

Maybe he just needs a little more time. After all, he was born two weeks early.

I’d like to do them soon, Mrs. Arrow.

Dancy nodded and held Bonaventure closer, kissing the soft spot on the top of his head.

A physical examination showed no irregularities, and auditory tests established that Bonaventure could definitely hear. In fact, it was obvious that he responded strongly to even the faintest sounds. This was believed to be connected to his muteness in some way, but no one could quite say how. It became a matter of much speculation. There were those who were certain his condition was a blessing, and those who feared it might be a curse. Dancy Arrow wondered fearfully which one it was. She was wondering about it on a Wednesday afternoon when Bonaventure was five months old. She was rocking him to sleep in the chair by the window when the suggestion of blame smoked in through the keyhole, for even a shut door won’t keep blame away. Dancy continued her to and fro rocking, an unspoken apology sitting on her lips. Had she abandoned her child for the sake of her loss? Had she failed to pay attention when she held him in her womb? Was Bonaventure’s absent voice her fault, too?

She sang a song to him then and put a kiss on his forehead; he lay in her arms looking up and directly into her eyes. Then he knitted his brow in a serious way, which gave him the look of a very old soul. He slowly breathed in and breathed out three times, then smiled up at her with all the strength he had.

Dancy had been wandering ever deeper into mourning, and Bonaventure had beckoned her back. And that became the moment in which Dancy Arrow knew there was something more to her little one’s silence; knew it as surely as if some talkative angel had come into the room and told her so. She wasn’t sure what to do with this realization, so she set it down in the back of her mind and turned her thoughts away. She moved to the daybed, lay down on her side, and wrapped her arm around her baby as if to put him back inside her.

Dancy had missed the other side of Bonaventure’s silence. She did not realize he could hear her heartbeat whenever he wanted to. She was unaware he could find the sound of her blood flowing and of the inflation and deflation of her lungs no matter how far away she was. She had no idea he could hear a bluesy trumpet in a French Quarter alley, or the shuffling of tarot cards in a Bogalusa sanctum, or the echoes of footsteps made by the Acolapissa more than three hundred years before, or the fog rolling over Saint Anthony’s Garden some fourteen miles away.

Bonaventure Arrow could hear conjured charms and sanctified spirits deep in the marrow of New Orleans. He could hear the movements of voodoo queens and the prayers of long dead saints. He could hear the past and the present.

But even had she known all that, Dancy would not have imagined that such hearing was only a bellwether of what was to come. She could not understand that Bonaventure’s muteness was not a handicap at all but a gift—an extraordinary, inexplicable, immeasurable gift that allowed him to hear what no one else could. The silence that had taken the place of Bonaventure’s voice was the very same silence in which exists the Universe of Every Single Sound, a place that reverberates with perfect peace and mirthful bliss, but also with despair’s deep moaning and the whispers of secrets.

Two such secrets lived right there in the house on Christopher Street in Bayou Cymbaline, while yet another was scattered over miles and miles and miles. Those secrets were waiting for Bonaventure to hear them and find them and take them out for healing. They would have to wait seven more years, for Bonaventure Arrow needed to grow into his gift; after all, he was only a baby. And he needed to join with a kindred spirit, one Trinidad Prefontaine—a female Creole servant, childless and widowed, who lived in Pascagoula, Mississippi, at this time.

As for Dancy, Bonaventure was the child she loved with all her heart, and a tether to the time she simply thought of as Before.

The Time She Simply Thought of as Before

BONAVENTURE Arrow was conceived during an evening twilight, the fruit of a casual Catholic and a fallen-away Baptist who’d made unwed, unrepentant, consummated love on a Sunday in May of 1949, with a tenderness and a passion uncommon in two so young.

Bonaventure’s parents, William Arrow and Dancy Roman, had met at a place called Papa Jambalaya’s, a gumbo joint out on Atchafalaya Road, where food bit the tongue and liquor stung the eyes and some Creoles from Opelousas played hot zydeco. Cigarette smoke and drugstore cologne twirled the room on the heels of the two-step, while trills of laughter, hum, and sizzle accompanied the band. And every now and then, off to the side, came the cracking sound of a break shot in a game of crazy eight.

The first time William saw Dancy he lost his breath completely. By the time she reached his table, he barely had it back. There was nothing but the sight of her—no smell of Creole cooking, no beat of stomping feet, no sound of strummed-on washboard or of button accordion song. Never in his life had he been so enthralled. The curve of her cheekbone transfixed him; the sweep of her jaw threw him down; and the delicacy of her ear lobe ran off with his heart. It took everything he had not to put his hand on her face, just to know for an instant what that would be like.

Dancy touched the nib of her pencil to the tip of her tongue, placed it on her order pad, and asked if he’d decided. He couldn’t stop staring long enough to reply. The tip of her tongue might as well have been a lightning bolt that struck him in the chest.

She smiled while he fumbled to find his voice and recommended the chicken étouffée. He nodded and said that would be just fine.

What’s your name? he blurted out, as she turned to walk away.

She hesitated a bit, he was a stranger after all, but he had such an innocent face. Dancy, she replied. What’s yours?

William.

He ate dinner at Papa’s for several nights running, taking four hours to drink three beers. He wanted to be wherever she was. Every night, they talked to each other and joked around. William tried to get up the nerve to ask if he might take her home; he’d rehearsed it at least five hundred times but couldn’t get any further than asking about the special. And then on the seventh night, ignoring the oceans of blood that roared in his ears and the winds of anxiety that blew his mouth dry, William Arrow’s last nerve finally came through.

Papa’s was noisy as usual while he waited for a table in Dancy’s section. But he was patient and determined.

Hey there, William, need some time to decide?

Not tonight, Dancy. I know exactly what I want.

Well, good. The food gets here quicker if you tell me what to bring. She winked at him and did that pencil-to-tongue thing. After a good ten seconds went by, Dancy started to say he would have to speak up some, but the look on his face made her words turn back.

Her blue eyes found his brown ones and their gazes locked in tight. There was no one and nothing else in that time and place for as long as it took life to turn inside out.

I don’t want any food, William said. I just want to know if I can see you home tonight. That is, unless you’ve already got a ride.

She didn’t say anything right away; she was lost in the brown of his eyes. Several seconds ticked by before she managed to tell him that she got off at eleven, and no, she didn’t have a ride. She said she walked because home wasn’t that far, just under a mile she supposed. She explained that she liked walking because the noise and the smoke and the grease of Papa’s always stuck to her, and the night air made everything fall clean away. William didn’t mention that he had a car; a ride would be over too quickly.

The pulse of the earth thrummed through the moonlight, mixing its heartbeats amongst theirs and offering them a promise. William and Dancy had never even seen each other outside of Papa’s, so there was awkwardness between them at first, the sort that will put a notch in a breath. But then they fell into step as they walked side by side, and they swallowed and blinked in a comforting synchrony. Their hands never touched, not even in an accidental brushing, and that was a good thing, for real intimacy has a dawn. They stuck to the shoulder of the backcountry road until Dancy turned onto a shortcut that took them through a forest of loblolly pine. Fallen needles covered the ground, giving hush to their shoes and a spring to their step, though the bounce was more to do with them walking together along the edge of possibility.

That evening’s walk turned into an every-evening ritual that allowed them time to become better acquainted, not to mention familiar with nuances of voice and speech—William was just as fond of in my opinion as Dancy was of that’s how I see it, anyway. They watched for a smile to go from mouth to eyes, which usually happened in unison on both of their faces. And so they slipped into courtship. He taught her to drive his ’47 Chevrolet, and she taught him to whistle real loud through his teeth.

The driving lessons were quite the experience for William. They practiced in the lumberyard parking lot when she got off work, and later graduated to some back roads that were mainly used by farmers. Then one Saturday afternoon, she just up and drove out onto the highway without even saying she was going to do it. Dancy declared she’d never felt so free and promised to teach him to whistle like a longshoreman in return for his patient instruction.

William and Dancy were opposites, different by nature yet equally smitten. She was rather fair-skinned and fine-boned, while he was quite tall, with a suntanned face he’d earned on his college rowing team. He had a sweet tooth, while she preferred salt, so when it came to agreeing on food they were beat before they started. There were, however, two things they had in common: their fathers were dead, and their mothers were fixed on religion.

Likenesses and differences set to the side, it could never be said that one had fallen harder in love than the other. Before long they had formed into a circle, and neither of them could imagine being a straight line again, caught in the loneliness of blunt, severed ends.

When he said he wanted to introduce her to his mother and would like to be introduced to hers, she told him she wasn’t ready for all that and didn’t care to discuss the matter further. And so they continued to live in a world that fit inside a few hours. That is until he drove her to the small house he was renting on Washington Avenue in New Orleans, where they spent an entire afternoon kissing and caressing and moving against each other. There were several such occasions after that one; occasions in which they managed to find fulfillment within the confines of risk-free touch.

And then came that Sunday in May.

William had picked Dancy up precisely at noon; they planned to spend the entire day in New Orleans. She was wearing a green-and-blue-striped sun blouse and a light green skirt, and she’d let her hair fall loose, the way he liked it best. When she hopped into the car and leaned over toward him, he knew just how to touch her chin and tip it slightly, and how to move his own head to catch the lightness of her kiss. Their first kiss of the day was always sweet like that, soft and a little bit breathy.

While William and Dancy were driving to New Orleans, Dancy’s mother was still attending services over at the International Church of the Elevated Forthright Gospel, to which she’d converted—the one she’d left the Southern Baptists for. The Forthright Gospelers didn’t have an actual house of worship made of bricks or stones or Louisiana lumber but met down by the river under what they called the Resurrection Tent, a structure that was really nothing more than some canvas tarpaulins from a surplus store over in Gretna. Dancy had gone to the tent service just once and refused to ever go again. The preacher was a fearmonger in her eyes, a man who could only threaten. His face became grotesque and spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth as he beseeched God Almighty in a doom-laden voice.

But the ranting didn’t work on Dancy. She wasn’t afraid of her mother’s odious preacher, or of that preacher’s gruesome God. When she came right out and said as much, her mother told her she was taking the shortest road to damnation there was. Dancy said she didn’t care. After that, she proceeded to excuse herself from organized religion altogether, which is how she came to have Sundays free to do whatever she liked.

William parked near his house, and they took the St. Charles streetcar to Canal Street, getting off at the French Quarter. The day was beautiful, pure-aired and velvet. William took Dancy for brunch at Antoine’s, and then they strolled the Vieux Carré, ducking into shops, trying on hats, and sizing up antiques for imaginary purchase, though the only thing they really bought was a box of pralines. They listened to a street band play some good jazz. They went for a ride in a surrey. They savored the stirrings that would lead to William’s bed.

When they returned to the house on Washington Avenue, some essence of pent-up passion that always haunts the Quarter returned along with them. They’d felt arousal before, but this time was different. They wound around each other with a languid tension and a wild thirst for more. They went to the edge and back, and then they took the jump. They had never felt anything like it.

Afterwards, as they lay together on William’s soft sheets, coolness crept over their skin like dry dew. He tightened his arms around her and pulled her close as he could. She nestled her head beneath his chin and tangled her legs up with his. Neither one spoke for a while, and when they did, it was in whispers.

I love you, Dancy.

I love you, too.

And so William and Dancy became a destiny fulfilled, two halves of the same whole, a sun and a moon in their own private galaxy. They lay entwined and thought themselves alone. But that is one thing they most definitely were not, for Bonaventure had begun. The cells of his body were doubling again and again, dividing in two, then four, then eight, becoming many thousands.

A few days after their incautious passion, tiny embryonic Bonaventure floated down a fallopian tube and settled in to grow. About five weeks later, his arms and legs began to bud, his heart had started to beat its own drum, and blood swirled through him at four miles an hour. Bonaventure would keep on growing and changing and changing again and soon would weigh as much as a three-page letter.

Trinidad Prefontaine detected a change in the night sky. She ascribed it to a new presence, one that needed some time to reach her, for starlight does not hurry.

One missed period and two sore breasts later Dancy said she had something to tell William as he walked her home through the loblolly pines. She didn’t say anything for a pained eternity, and then she stopped walking and looked him straight in the eye. Her tears welled up and spilled over before she even said a word, and William was certain she was about to break his heart.

This Turn of Events

WILLIAM Everest Arrow and Danita Celine Roman stood before the justice of the peace upstairs in the courthouse on Lafayette Street in Bayou Cymbaline, on a Wednesday in July of 1949, promising to have and to hold from that day forward. He was twenty-two and she was just nineteen. Both of them were excited-nervous. The bride wore a powder blue, short-sleeved dress with eleven buttons down the front and a cinched waist that would be too tight in a week. She’d fashioned her long blond hair into a chignon that she felt was in keeping with the feather and rhinestones on the netted felt hat she had borrowed from a friend. The groom was dashing in dark gray serge and a white bespoke shirt, with twenty-four-karat gold cuff links at his wrists. The scents of Evening in Paris and Old Spice puffed into the air from the pulse points on the sides of their necks, near the veins that carried blood from their heads to their hearts.

The county clerk acted as witness, and the certificate of marriage was signed and recorded.

The young man’s background was full of pedigreed ancestors, a businessman and bankers among the paternal Arrows, and landed gentry among his mother’s people on the old-moneyed Molyneaux side.

Not so the young lady’s. Her father’s family, the Romans, owed their living to the various crustaceans of the Louisiana delta; anything that crawled, swam, or burrowed in the muck around Shoats Creek. Her mother’s stock, the Cormiers by name, were good-natured, hard-scrabble bayou folk who dwelled amidst the palmetto jungles of Beauregard Parish along with lizards and spiders and dark-loving bats. They were steeped in all things Cajun and Creole and wore the pungent, musky taint of the swamp like a badge. Dancy’s mother had never fit in with her folk.

Though the lovers paid no mind to their dissimilar social standing, it was evidenced by more than the quality of their clothes and ancestral pedigrees or lack thereof. He had recently graduated from the law school at Tulane, and she from a third-rate beauty school above Slocum Brothers Furniture in Bayou Cymbaline, an education she’d paid for with waitressing wages.

But such trivial things mattered not.

There’d been no talk of conversion on either side. Their mothers, Letice Arrow and Adelaide Roman, being a couple of churchgoing women, were greatly affected by this turn of events. Each had a grievance with the very sudden wedding, one regarding it as socially improper, and the other as inconsiderate (Just imagine what people will say!). In the aftermath of the bare-bones nuptials, unease and embarrassment tried to choke those mothers to death. The shock of a courthouse wedding attended by a premarital baby would certainly not wear off quickly. Letice Arrow hadn’t liked the idea of a civil ceremony, but it was the fact of the baby that distressed her more, though not for the obvious reason but for one that would be revealed much later.

Familial relations were strained at best—a situation helped along by private demons, not the least of which was envy: Letice Arrow would spend more on a hat than Adelaide Roman could spend on a sofa.

The Wanderer, As Yet Unknown

THERE was another who knew private demons, a solitary wandering man. He’d spent more than half his life moving from place to place, laboring as only an angry man can, pounding harder and cutting deeper and wielding an axe with an arm full of rage in attempts at substitute vengeance.

There’d been stints as a farmhand and a ranch hand in the twenties, when he was very young. The Wanderer had experience with animals. But then the Great Depression came and those jobs disappeared. In the thirties he found his meals and a place to lay his head in work camps run by the WPA. He helped build roads and bridges—sturdy, useful things. He was left alone. There was the occasional woman, the type who was thrilled by his looks and never cared that he didn’t want her to talk, the type who didn’t wonder why he wanted her to wear a pearl necklace, the type who didn’t mind being a stand-in.

The Wanderer had been too young to fight in the First World War but had volunteered to fight in the Second, though by then he was older than the average soldier. He was sick of the loneliness of his angry life, and so used the war to court death. In the thick of the action, he swallowed his fear and vomited it back up. By the time the war was over, he knew a two-part suffering: one part injury and one part survivor’s guilt, and that two-part misery curdled his bitterness.

He came back home in general good health, that is, except for his face. He’d lost a part of his jaw near Mézières in the Champagne-Ardenne. The medics did the best they could on his once handsome, shot-up jaw. The doctors worked on the leftovers, wiring and grafting and stitching together. What remained of his chin no longer sagged open and he could chew his food enough, but his eyelid drooped and he’d lost half his hearing. The Wanderer no longer resembled himself.

The doctors told him he was lucky. They were quite proud of their work.

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