Immigrants lost in the blistering expanse of the Sonoran Desert, problem bears, bats pollinating saguaros, a Good Samaritan filling tanks at emergency water stations, and the terrified runaway boy who shoots him pierce the heart and mind of Rosana Derais. Silence and Song, is a love letter, a prayer to these strangers whose lives penetrate and transform Rosana's own sorrow.
Award-winning writer Melanie Rae Thon's Silence & Song is a diptych, two lyric fictions hinged by a short prose poem. Inspired and informed by biology, physics, music, history, intimate violence, and miraculous resilience, the three pieces move from mourning to song.
