WHISPERS

by Ed Buhrer

For everyone who has heard the voices, some of them are real. For everyone who has seen the signs, they are everywhere. Listen, and you will hear; look, and you will see. Then you can understand. On your eighteenth birthday, someone your own age, someone that you have known for less than a year, goes off to die so that you may continue living; what do you do? If you’re Matthew Morning, you make an annual pilgrimage to his grave to remind yourself of why you are still alive…and you tell the story. This story unfolds in my 204,500-word novel entitled, Whispers.

Start with Matthew, approaching eighteen in depressed rural Lee County, Virginia, in 1961, as he learns to understand the power of love for a girl named Ginger, daughter of a poor mining family. Add adventures in the woods, a mysterious and hidden old mansion on an equally mysterious mountain, abandoned houses, and the daily goings-on of a high school. What do these places hold for three young friends -- one black, the others descendants of long-gone Native Americans -- brought together by accident, growing up quickly and trying to deal with the bigotry in a world that is not kind or patient, but also holds many beautiful secrets? What will these boys – Matthew, TeePee, and Jeffie -- do without giving in or giving up? Their backgrounds couldn’t be more different, yet the common ground they share and the strong bonds they form create a connectedness that will last beyond their lifetimes. Honor, justice, revenge, strength of family and heritage, tenderness, and bitterness – these will draw the reader into the story of a man, a teacher, as he recounts the turmoil of the most powerful year of his life, the year he lost everything and everyone he had come to love. The novel moves between Matthew’s life with his mother in their first real home and his final year of high school, where he meets friends whose values and understanding will help him through the turmoil of death and incredible loss. Ultimately, Matthew will be drawn into a dark experience that will require him to kill.

713 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Hi. I grew up for the first 38 years in New Jersey, minus four while I was away in the Air Force. If you grow up in Jersey, you can survive anywhere and drive anywhere. I now live in rural central Virginia with my wife of almost fifty years and three feline road orphans. When I'm not writing, I garden, read, chop wood, and to let off steam, I participate in full-contact sarcasm and occasionally hunt deer flies with my Red Ryder BB gun. To date (December 2013), I have 17 books for Kindles with Amazon and six published books, two still in print. You can also visit my humble blog at
http://pizzaed.blogspot.com