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Now SilenceIn this superbly researched WWII novel, award-winning writer, Tori Warner Shepard, captures the mood of remote Santa Fe, New Mexico as it waits out WWII for the return of her men held in Japanese prison camps. POW Melo Garcia has survived the Bataan Death March in the Philippines but his brother and father have not. Along with 1,500 other American prisoners, he is diseased, tortured, starved, and used as slave labor in a condemned coal mine outside of Nagasaki, Japan. Melo is the last living hope to continue his family's centuries old line for his war-widowed mother, Nicasia, who prays for his return alongside his sweetheart, LaBelle. They have received no reliable news since the surrender to the enemy in 1942. The novel is as much a story of the men's heroism as it is of their Hispanic community which after Pearl Harbor was a distant and a safe refuge from the war, sought out by the US Government as an internment camp for 2,000 Japanese “Isseii” barely a mile from the office of the top-secret Manhattan Project that was developing the atomic bomb to be dropped 20 miles from Melo's prison camp. Add to the mix FBI and counter-intelligence agents, Gringo fanatics opposed to Roosevelt, Melo's “novia” LaBelle and Phyllis, the redheaded bombshell, who challenges her. And Melo himself with his mother who embodies “gracia,” a word that does not translate. This gripping exposition of the Japanese atrocities is even-handed and the characters and personalities on the home front will haunt your memory.
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Reviews
In Now Silence, longtime Santa Fe resident Tori Warner Shepard depicts Santa Fe as it was while in the grips of World War II. The city's residents await the return of sons, brothers, and sweethearts, some of whom have perished in the Bataan Death March, others of whom survived only to slave away in a coal mine outside Nagasaki, Japan. As she shifts between describing scenes in Santa Fe and Japan, Shepard depicts the heroism of both the soldiers and the women they left behind. Shepard grew up in war-shattered Japan, where her stepfather oversaw Coca-Cola bottling plants. Moving to Santa Fe in the 1970s, she found that, despite its distance from the battlefield, the city had been shaped just as much by the war as had the places of her childhood. Although the reader can easily be swept away by the thoughtful character portrayals and the compelling narrative, it remains clear throughout the novel that Shepard has paid diligent attention to historical details. -- --New Mexico Magazine, January, 2008
Santa Fe, New Mexico, World War II. This is the story of the women left behind waiting for the men in their lives to return home from the Japanese Prisoner of War Camps; men who will not be the same as when they left. There's Anissa, widow and local leader of the cult like I AM group with invoking St. Germain to stop the 'friendly fire'. Her feud with her husband's former lover, Phyllis, only fuels her madness. Nicasia, her husband and son killed in the war, clings to the hope that her remaining son, Melo Garcia, will return safely from the POW camp where she had last heard he was still alive. Needy LaBelle, Melo's novia (fiancée) lives with her intended mother-in-law, never quite in touch with the reality of what lies ahead. Their stories are interspersed with the story of Melo and his friend Senio Lopez as they struggle to survive the Bataan Death March and the torture and hideous conditions of the Japanese camp where they are being held. These camp passages are dark and disturbing and altogether real. They make for compelling, if not pleasant, reading and are essential to the story. Will they live to return to Santa Fe? Will the women survive the wait? Author Tori Warner Shepard has given us a glimpse into life as it was and, we hope, will never be again in a sleepy little New Mexico town called Santa Fe. Shepard has taken the profane and the faithful, the serious and the amusing, and woven together a story that should be a must read for all of us so we will never forget. -- Sabra Brown Steinsiek, Readingnewmexico.com, November, 2008
Our experiences shape who we are. In the case of author Tori Warner Shepard, her early life laid out a path for her that could only be expressed properly in art and in writing. Having grown up in the tumult of World War II, she experienced the chaos through the confusion of the Pearl Harbor attacks and the unrelated loss of her father. With her mother remarried at the conclusion of the War, Shepard moved with her family to Japan as her stepfather oversaw the installation of Coca Cola bottling plants. She was dejected and forlorn, ripped away from her family in a foreign land that had been ravaged by war. But life has a funny way of making our darkest experiences useful and Shepard's early life has, indeed, proven to be useful. With her latest, Now Silence: A Novel of World War II, Shepard utilizes her experiences of being uprooted to tell an engaging story of the women living during the War. Couched in a mass of research and history, Shepard's novel has a broad epic feel as it pours out across the pages. Her characters are rich and convincing, her prose is pleasantly vigorous, and the informative research behind the pages of fiction adds a dark and almost sinister element to the war. Now Silence is, by and large, about two women: Phyllis and Anissa. Their stories form the centrepiece to the tale, granting a balancing point on which all of the other stories rotate. Phyllis and Anissa have one thing in common: a man. Phyllis, redheaded bombshell that she is, is introduced as she loses Russell, a man whom she loves dearly. Russell is still married to Anissa, a crazed cult-obsessed nutbag dragging her feet on the divorce. As Russell passes on in an accident, Phyllis undertakes a journey to confront Anissa and to give her Russell's shotgun. The trip takes Phyllis through military land, where she meets and suitably greets a host of men in uniform. Meanwhile, Anissa is still as nutty as ever and her life in Santa Fe with the fiery LaBelle is filled with attempts at bringing new converts to her strange religion. LaBelle, meanwhile, awaits news from Melo, who is in a camp outside of Nagasaki. The treat here is in how Shepard writes her characters. They are bold, energetic, and electrifying. Never venturing into mere stereotype territory, she writes her women with beauty and uprightness (even the nutbags) and weaves her characters around each other with precision. The dialogue is crisp and clever, allowing each individual time to breathe and exist on the pages. Along with the characters, the settings and the historical context are appealing. Shepard has spared no expense researching her book, filling pages with facts and the untold stories of the War. Despite this, Shepard remains equitable in her approach and is never preachy. This is no anti-war novel; this is simply a novel about life. The backdrop adds to the compelling and pressing nature of the stories, but there is no argument against or for the War. Shepard's Now Silence is an enthralling piece. It is intense, sexy, poignant, dark, humorous, and altogether engaging from the opening page to the final moments. --Jordan Richardson, blogcritics.org, October 22, 2008
In Now Silence, longtime Santa Fe resident Tori Warner Shepard depicts Santa Fe as it was while in the grips of World War II. The city's residents await the return of sons, brothers, and sweethearts, some of whom have perished in the Bataan Death March, others of whom survived only to slave away in a coal mine outside Nagasaki, Japan. As she shifts between describing scenes in Santa Fe and Japan, Shepard depicts the heroism of both the soldiers and the women they left behind. Shepard grew up in war-shattered Japan, where her stepfather oversaw Coca-Cola bottling plants. Moving to Santa Fe in the 1970s, she found that, despite its distance from the battlefield, the city had been shaped just as much by the war as had the places of her childhood. Although the reader can easily be swept away by the thoughtful character portrayals and the compelling narrative, it remains clear throughout the novel that Shepard has paid diligent attention to historical details. -- --New Mexico Magazine, January, 2008
Santa Fe, New Mexico, World War II. This is the story of the women left behind waiting for the men in their lives to return home from the Japanese Prisoner of War Camps; men who will not be the same as when they left. There's Anissa, widow and local leader of the cult like I AM group with invoking St. Germain to stop the 'friendly fire'. Her feud with her husband's former lover, Phyllis, only fuels her madness. Nicasia, her husband and son killed in the war, clings to the hope that her remaining son, Melo Garcia, will return safely from the POW camp where she had last heard he was still alive. Needy LaBelle, Melo's novia (fiancée) lives with her intended mother-in-law, never quite in touch with the reality of what lies ahead. Their stories are interspersed with the story of Melo and his friend Senio Lopez as they struggle to survive the Bataan Death March and the torture and hideous conditions of the Japanese camp where they are being held. These camp passages are dark and disturbing and altogether real. They make for compelling, if not pleasant, reading and are essential to the story. Will they live to return to Santa Fe? Will the women survive the wait? Author Tori Warner Shepard has given us a glimpse into life as it was and, we hope, will never be again in a sleepy little New Mexico town called Santa Fe. Shepard has taken the profane and the faithful, the serious and the amusing, and woven together a story that should be a must read for all of us so we will never forget. -- Sabra Brown Steinsiek, Readingnewmexico.com, November, 2008
Our experiences shape who we are. In the case of author Tori Warner Shepard, her early life laid out a path for her that could only be expressed properly in art and in writing. Having grown up in the tumult of World War II, she experienced the chaos through the confusion of the Pearl Harbor attacks and the unrelated loss of her father. With her mother remarried at the conclusion of the War, Shepard moved with her family to Japan as her stepfather oversaw the installation of Coca Cola bottling plants. She was dejected and forlorn, ripped away from her family in a foreign land that had been ravaged by war. But life has a funny way of making our darkest experiences useful and Shepard's early life has, indeed, proven to be useful. With her latest, Now Silence: A Novel of World War II, Shepard utilizes her experiences of being uprooted to tell an engaging story of the women living during the War. Couched in a mass of research and history, Shepard's novel has a broad epic feel as it pours out across the pages. Her characters are rich and convincing, her prose is pleasantly vigorous, and the informative research behind the pages of fiction adds a dark and almost sinister element to the war. Now Silence is, by and large, about two women: Phyllis and Anissa. Their stories form the centrepiece to the tale, granting a balancing point on which all of the other stories rotate. Phyllis and Anissa have one thing in common: a man. Phyllis, redheaded bombshell that she is, is introduced as she loses Russell, a man whom she loves dearly. Russell is still married to Anissa, a crazed cult-obsessed nutbag dragging her feet on the divorce. As Russell passes on in an accident, Phyllis undertakes a journey to confront Anissa and to give her Russell's shotgun. The trip takes Phyllis through military land, where she meets and suitably greets a host of men in uniform. Meanwhile, Anissa is still as nutty as ever and her life in Santa Fe with the fiery LaBelle is filled with attempts at bringing new converts to her strange religion. LaBelle, meanwhile, awaits news from Melo, who is in a camp outside of Nagasaki. The treat here is in how Shepard writes her characters. They are bold, energetic, and electrifying. Never venturing into mere stereotype territory, she writes her women with beauty and uprightness (even the nutbags) and weaves her characters around each other with precision. The dialogue is crisp and clever, allowing each individual time to breathe and exist on the pages. Along with the characters, the settings and the historical context are appealing. Shepard has spared no expense researching her book, filling pages with facts and the untold stories of the War. Despite this, Shepard remains equitable in her approach and is never preachy. This is no anti-war novel; this is simply a novel about life. The backdrop adds to the compelling and pressing nature of the stories, but there is no argument against or for the War. Shepard's Now Silence is an enthralling piece. It is intense, sexy, poignant, dark, humorous, and altogether engaging from the opening page to the final moments. --Jordan Richardson, blogcritics.org, October 22, 2008
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