DANCING IN THE SILENCE

DANCING IN THE SILENCE
Friday, August 2, 2024 by LINDA SAMMARITAN

Categories: Friday's Fiction / GUEST AUTHORS

PLEASE WELCOME

LINDA SAMMARITAN

FICTION FRIDAY

For Teens and Tweens: Inspiring Summer Reads and Back-to-School Books

It’s August, and summer is already coming to a close. Either children are starting to count down vacation days they have left, or they’re already back in class. As a kid, I loved summer—not for the baseball games, ice cream cones, and trips to the beach. I loved vacation because I could read all day unless my mother kicked me out of the house for some “fresh air.” It really steamed her when I sat on the front step in the fresh air and read my book! Once school was back in session, I stuffed in as much extra reading as I could between assignments.

I write books now, and the middle-grade/young-adult fiction I’ve published makes for great summer reading as well as for book reports during the school year. Better yet, it’s great inspirational reading, encouraging kids to practice love and loyalty.

What follows is an excerpt from book two of my series World Without Sound. Dancing in the Silence features a military family in the Vietnam War years told from the oldest sister’s point of view. (Book One is highlighted in Fiction Friday here.) Debbie is thirteen and her little sister is almost two with two brothers in between them. Krista is deaf and has cerebral palsy. Their dad has moved them across the country while he trains for the Vietnam War.

In the following excerpt, I wrote the chapter to show how siblings come together to protect their own, no matter how much they may squabble.

EXCERPT

We’d left our big boat of a station wagon with civilian friends until we returned to New York, so for now, we’d make do with one little, and I mean little, blue Renault for the months in between. It had about as much space as a Volkswagen Beetle. Maybe less.

Daddy stuffed the larger suitcases into the trunk. Then we squeezed into the narrow seats with the leftover carry-on items. We wedged shoe bags, toy bags, and duffel bags between our bodies, under our feet, and on our laps. I could finally understand why we carried Krista all over three airports. Nowhere to stow a stroller.

“We only have to endure this sardine can for two hours,” Daddy assured us.

A sardine can that had been sitting in an oven. We’d started this trip bundled in our coats. Those got left behind with Mr. Richards once he dropped us off at LaGuardia Airport. Good thing. We would have died of heat exhaustion before ever reaching our new home.

Wade wiped the sweat off his face with my cotton jacket. I didn’t complain. A small price to pay for having Daddy back. Besides, I’d only needed the extra layer on the air-conditioned plane anyway.

Daddy slammed the trunk and slid into the driver’s seat. He was the only one with any space. “Got to be able to use the brake and the clutch without getting tangled in stuff.” He turned back to us kids before switching on the ignition. “Got enough room back there?” And he laughed, which made me and Paul and Wade laugh, too.

Mom, loaded down with Krista on her lap and surrounded by the diaper bag, her purse, and our snack bag, pointed a finger at him. “Ha. Ha.”

And away we went.

Paul stuck his head out the window. “Whoa! Those mountains look like a pile of rocks.”

“You’ll get to see them up close and personal.” Daddy reached back and tapped the duffel bag on Paul’s lap. “You want your head chopped off?”

Paul ducked back in on the double.

As we approached San Bernardino, Mom passed back a bottle of water for the three of us to share. Paul dribbled a portion over his neck. Wade copied him. I drank my third, then ran my cool tongue over my dry lips.

The gravel-looking rocks had grown to huge boulders towering over the car.

“Do they ever have rockslides around here?” I asked. “We’d be flattened like a tin can under an eighteen-wheeler.”

“Sometimes, but they haven’t had any earthquakes lately to shake them loose.”

Add earthquakes to my list of dangers to survive in this foreign country, but being a flatlander, I didn’t get bored with the view. Wild mountains, huge boulders, and sand stretching as far as I could see. Francie was right. Even the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York were green hills compared to the stony crags towering over us.

We took a break from our tight quarters halfway through the drive and stopped at a diner for a meal. It seemed to be an old railroad car, all metal and painted with blue horizontal stripes, kind of like something on the set of Route 66.

I slithered out from between the bags as a blast of desert heat and the intoxicating aroma of grilled burgers welcomed me. With my short skirt, I made sure my hind end was toward the car, not the road, as I stretched cramped legs by bending over and touching my toes. Straightening up, I noticed people in the restaurant laughing. I turned to where they pointed.

Us?

We looked like a clown act at the circus. One tiny car with more and more people climbing out of it. Paul popped out on the driver’s side. Wade tumbled through the door I’d exited, followed by a shoe bag he knocked off the seat. Mom shimmied out as she juggled her purse, the diaper bag, and Krista. Daddy opened the trunk, and all anyone could see of him was his backside as he rearranged the suitcases.

“Debbie,” Mom called. “Please take Krista off my hands while I reorganize in here.” Without waiting for my response, she set a sleepy Krista on her feet. What a little trooper. She hadn’t once complained. Not about getting up at dawn, not about the plane ride, not about this heat.

I grabbed Krista’s hand before she fell. Since getting leg braces, the poor baby had to learn to walk all over again, and she was still wobbly. Without my asking, Paul took Krista’s other hand. His eyes met mine, and we nodded to each other. If the audience on the other side of the windows found Krista’s braces to be part of our comedy act, we’d hold our heads high. We were family, and that’s what mattered.

More About Dancing in the Silence

How can an Air Force kid survive junior high when her dad’s at war, her little sister is deaf, and friends have abandoned her?

It’s 1967 and Debbie Hansen hates her life. She has to leave all of her New York friends, move to California’s Mojave Desert, then back to New York, all because her dad will be sent to Vietnam for a year. And three out of five pilots never come home. Debbie could be fatherless before she starts high school.

Her only comfort? She’d have her old friends to lean on if the worst happened. Wrong. When Debbie returns to her hometown, she finds the group moved on without her. She tries to reconnect, but their message is clear—NOT interested.

Living under the shadows of war, Debbie and her brothers mask their fears by acting out in anger toward each other until a final showdown erupts into near tragedy. Meanwhile, Mom forbids Debbie to teach Krista sign language. “Experts” say deaf children need to speak. Debbie defies them.

Krista is the only one who’s happy. She blossoms in her world without sound. Before Dad returns, if he returns, Debbie needs to choose—she can keep struggling to earn a place with the “in crowd,” or she can learn to dance with her sister in the silence.

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ABOUT LINDA SAMMARITAN

Linda Sammaritan writes realistic fiction, mostly for kids ages ten to fourteen. She has completed a middle-grade trilogy, World Without Sound, based on her own experiences growing up with a deaf sister. Book One, Reaching Into Silence, was a 2023 Carol Awards semi-finalist, an ACFW Genesis Contest semi-finalist, and a First Impressions Finalist. Book Two, Dancing in the Silence, is a 2024 Carol Award Finalist.

A wife, mother of three, and grandmother of eight, Linda regales the youngest grandchildren with “Nona Stories,” tales of her childhood. Maybe one day those stories will be in picture books!

Where Linda can be found on the web:

www.lindasammaritan.com

www.facebook.com/lindasammaritan

www.twitter.com/LindaSammaritan

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