Author’s Note upon RELEASE OF NEW EDITION
Revisiting And Silent Left the Place after so many years is just that, a visitation, just as the novel is a visitation to earlier times—of the Great War a hundred years ago, of Jim Crow Texas sixty years ago, of the memories of a middle-aged writer fifteen years ago. In revisiting this debut novel, I am swept away by how much I love these characters, especially Thomas Riley.
Riley is loosely based on my maternal grandfather, who was a veteran of the First World War. He lost an eye in the trench warfare in France and, like Riley, came back middle-aged and silent, though the anguish he bore showed across his face. He wasn't a Texan like my east Texas daddy; my grandfather was a house painter from Wisconsin, the son of French immigrants, but to me he embodied the same cryptic stoicism of “the parched flatness of South Texas where,” as the novel says, “a man's worth can be measured by the stillness of his shadow at sunset and the liveliness of it at dawn.”
Silent is a novel of a mythic Texas that never was. It is, like all fiction is, a work of the imagination, of memory, of lore, of—to quote a speech to the Texas Philosophical Society—“the myths that give life meaning…[that] one speaks of…as ghosts….energizing myths that reveal…the consciousness of Texans.”
Indeed, Silent is a love song to the storytelling Texans of my youth who forgave anybody anything so long as it made for a good story. But it is also a tale in search of forgiveness, of penance and atonement for the sins of the fathers and the fathers’ fathers visited upon the children, to paraphrase Euripides. Silent is a story of another time when moral burden lingered. We don't do that much anymore, we modern folk, however much it calls to us. We don't do penance or contrition; we most certainly don't do absolution beyond the realm of faith. Thomas Riley and his burden of silence would not fit into the modern world. But this old man helps me fit into my modern world, to make sense of our ravages and sorrows, and for that I am forever grateful.
And so, as the good people of Washington Writers’ Publishing House lift And Silent Left the Place back out among the living, I give thanks and I offer up its stories as visitors, as Tom Riley would call them, “come up to set a spell.” And I hope you too can sit with them, as he did, “Waiting for an answer. Waiting for an echo. Startled again by the sound of this voice.”
News & Awards
Washington Writers' Publishing House
Praise for And silent left the place
“Bruce’s characters leap off the page at you; they have vividness and substance, and the result, reading her work, is that one feels the life there…a deeply gifted writer…”
- Richard Bausch, Winner
Winner, PEN/Malamud and Rea Awards for the Short Story
“Elizabeth Bruce has a great literary voice, interwoven with wonderful, authentic characters plopped down into their own real world of Patsy Cline, barbecue, Herbert Tarryton, Jack Daniels, Bob Wills, boots, sweat, and longing. The Saturday night dance has already begun; don’t be late.”
- Mike Flanagan, author
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Old West and It’s About Time
“In a colorful prose style reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, Bruce leads us through unimaginably difficult ordeals. At the core of the narrative is an aging man whose experiences in the First World War -- horrifically detailed in a series of flashbacks -- have left him choosing to no longer use his powers of speech in public. This novel deserves a large audience.”
- Richard Judy, Georgia Author of the Year Finalist
author of THRU: An Appalachian Trail Love Story
“I laughed, I cried, I held my breath at times, holding the book tighter, not wanting to let go of these characters who were absolutely real to me.
Elizabeth Bruce has an incredible writer's voice.”
- Lynn Stearns, Fiction Editor, The Potomac Review
and Fiction Instructor Emerita, The Writers’ Center’s
“Elizabeth Bruce's And Silent Left the Place enthralled me with its story, with its tenderness and with the landscape and people who inhabit it. Her love of language is the very air she breathes, and she writes with the same poet's touch as Harper Lee, William Goyen, and Reynolds Price.”
- Michael Gushue, Co-curator, Poetry at the Watergate
and Co-Founder, Poetry Mutual Press
“The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever know how Elizabeth Bruce manages to reveal Thomas Riley’s searing pain without ever losing the optimism and sheer joy of her narrative. It is as though she plants her voice in the ground, like Riley, and it grows fully formed into her magical novel."
- Robin Allnutt
Creative Writing Faculty, Virginia Tech
“This book has a strong novelistic arc and feel, and memorable characters. There are scenes that are absolutely brilliant. This is a great achievement. “
- David A. Taylor, author
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America,
Cork Wars, Ginsing: The Divine Root, and Success: Stories
“Passionately charged, And Silent Left the Place illuminates the virile Texas landscape with a hauntingly native vividness and almost anthropological exactitude. In her fascinating characters, Ms. Bruce explores the entire keyboard of human emotions. Her finely tuned sensibility is everywhere evident, especially in her spirited dialogues filled with the stark nakedness of human feelings. The spell of Ms. Bruce’s novel will remain with us long after the last page is turned.”
- Ian Sydney March, Professor,
Department of English and Languages
Montgomery College
“A unique voice that truthfully and evocatively reveals lost memories of a profound Texas story, told with a Faulkneresque concern for humanity.
I adore her passion and the lyricism in her writing.”
- Guo Liang
Journalist and Translator of Rilke’s Poetry
“I couldn't put it down. West Texas was alive in the book, haunting and spare. I was deeply moved by the visit of old John Hopper and Thomas Riley. The reconciliation and healing that resulted went far beyond those two men. And it all took place in the silence created by the silence of Thomas Riley. Very profound.”
- The Reverend Judy Sessions (ret.)
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Harlingen, Texas
“Elizabeth Bruce is an incredibly disciplined writer with an exquisite ear for language and a vivid sense of character. Her strength lies in how well she can convey what makes an individual unique yet can include all her characters in the broader sweep of history and culture.”
- Lisa Schamess, author, Borrowed Light, and Winner,
Texas Institute of Letters’ Award for Best Work of First Fiction