Voices in the Blood

An author contemplates the motivations of his characteran alienated, exiled youth in seventeenth century France; a modern character struggles to derive personal meaning from an unknowable past, and in the fusion of these two efforts emerges a narrative of who we are and the forces that define us. Voices in the Blood is a novel about the stories in each of us, the voices that inform those stories and make us unique. Listening to our own voices gives each of us a sense of being, a sense of belonging, a sense of connection to our near and distant past and a future stretching away before us. It gives us a sense that we are indeed the center of the vast and mysterious universe. Sitting in a cemetery surrounded by the graves of his forebears, the twentieth century character says, sometimes I think that they really do know that Im here, all of them, even the ones that died long before I was born, and I think they can talk to me, and I stand very, very still and listen for their voices