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SILENT LEFT THE PLACE
COMMENTS FROM WRITERS AND COLLEAGUES “Elizabeth Bruce has written a beautiful and layered story of lives intertwined by multi-generational secrets.” “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.” "Welcome to the great vast Texas mystique, as open as the sky and as deep as the heart. It may rhyme with mesquite, but it has an underbelly as soft as a rattlesnake's. Elizabeth Bruce has a great literary voice, interwoven with some wonderful, authentic characters plopped down into their own real world. They may love Texas and loathe themselves, but they're always searching with the purpose of a serious tumbleweed. Listening to her audiobook, the writer disappears and the characters take over. That's what you want. Patsy Cline, barbecue, Herbert Tarryton, Jack Daniels, Bob Wills, boots, sweat, and longing. The Saturday night dance has already begun; don't be late." “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." “Elizabeth Bruce’s writing is incisive and her verbal skills formidable. What distinguishes her is a radar for the knotty, often messy predicaments of everyday reality—the compromises, the moments of sloughed off conscience. Elizabeth herself, however, is not one to be satisfied with the glib or pat, and neither is her writing.” “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.” “This book has a strong novelistic arc and feel, and memorable characters. There are scenes that are absolutely brilliant. The author manages the balancing act of Riley communicating with all these people in tense scenes amazingly well. This is a great achievement. “ “A unique voice that truthfully and evocatively reveals lost memories of a profound Texas story, told with a Faulkneresque concern for humanity. Elizabeth Bruce is one of the most dedicated, brilliant writers I’ve ever read.. I adore her passion and the lyricism in her writing.” |