Bookworm: Recently diagnosed? ‘Soundtrack’ is an uplifting, easy book to enjoy

‘Harbor Lights’ might make your hair stand on end

• By Matt Hay
• c. 2024, St. Martin’s Press
• $29, 272 pages

That one prom song always does it for you. Just a few notes and you’re reminded of sweaty hands and wilted corsages, awkward poses for parents with cameras, arms around your date, and tiny steps while swaying in a circle. A song sure can be a memory-tickler. In the new memoir, “Soundtrack of Silence” by Matt Hay (with Steve Eubanks), it can also be a lifeline.

It was an easy assumption: didn’t every kid grow up learning to read lips?

Matt Hay did, and he figured it was a part of being human. You heard certain syllables, saw words form on faces, and you communicated from there. You turned up the radio on road trips. You said, “Pardon me?” or “Huh?” a lot. Wasn’t that normal? Obviously, a guy could get around fine this way, right?

Hay thought so, until he graduated high school and set his sights on going to West Point. At his pre-admission physical, he was turned down and he was devastated. As was stated in black and white, his hearing was well below optimal.

Back at college near his Indiana hometown, Hayes was finally given a diagnosis: he had neurofibromatosis type 2, or NF2, which affected the nerves in his brain that deal with hearing. But that wasn’t all: the disease caused tumors that could go rogue – but Hay didn’t want to worry about that.

College was great, and he was falling in love with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Nora was attending medical school, and Hay’s diagnosis didn’t scare her away. She barely even blinked when Hay temporarily lost his ability to walk due to surgery on an NF2 tumor, and life went on. Nora and Hay married, found jobs, bought a condo, and Hay worked to imprint his favorite songs on his brain before NF2 took his hearing.

He likened NF2 to a “steamroller” that moved so slowly he couldn’t see it coming, though he knew it would arrive someday. Could he keep it from crushing his dreams?

The soundtrack of your life runs from folk music to hip hop to country music to pop, and a single line of any of those old songs acts like a time machine. Now imagine the hard loss of never hearing them again and read “Soundtrack of Silence.”

Using music as both touchstone and launching point, author Matt Hay (with Steve Eubanks) takes readers on a journey that’s sweet and funny but also terrifying, all wrapped up in a Classic Hits playlist that hints at, if not a totally happy ending, at least one that’s not going to sound like a funeral dirge. It helps that Hay’s knowledge and love of music loops through his story and leaves snips of song behind, like breadcrumbs, to ground readers in time and place.

Despite a few setbacks for the author, this is an uplifting, easy book to enjoy, and it could be quite surprisingly comforting for someone with a new diagnosis. Try “Soundtrack of Silence” and see if it does it for you.

“Harbor Lights: Stories”

• By James Lee Burke
• c. 2024, Atlantic Monthly Press
• $27, 358 pages

Living in the underbelly of society is a struggle. It’s a hand-to-mouth existence; you never know where your next meal will come from, unless it’s from a warden or a trusty. You never truly know who you’re sleeping against or where your next ten bucks’ll come from. There’s no privacy living in the underbelly. You can lose your soul there. And in “Harbor Lights,” a new short-story collection by James Lee Burke, you could also lose your life.

No matter what the chore, Aaron Broussard loved doing things with his father: fishing, boating, traveling, lunching, spotting dead men in the water along the Louisiana coast. James Broussard knew why those men were floating: it was 1942, and a German submarine was nearby. He knew it. In the first story, that which gives this book its title, the FBI knew it, too, and they aimed to keep Broussard quiet.

Beneath Montana’s Flathead Lake lies an ancient highway that folks say you can see if you look hard. Running from the law, R.B Ruger stood on the banks of the lake and saw the road dotted with headlights like stars in a dark Western sky. In “Going Across Jordan,” he never thought anyone’d need to dive down and follow it.

Mind yourself and don’t go anywhere near the Red Hat House out near Camp A, where men suffer horribly. Lead Belly was out there once, and Arlen thinks about that, and about how he just wants to be left alone with his Gibson to serve his time. But in “Big Midnight Special,” there’ll be prison boxing match soon, and Arlen will put on gloves – or else.

All Francis wanted to do was go home. Home from Vietnam, home and away from his memories, home in the middle of a storm with his son, but his truck broke down outside a two-bit bar in the middle of nowhere. He’d seen some things in battle that he’d sooner forget, but in “A Distant War,” nothing compared to the fight with his past.

No matter what the season, it often feels like you don’t have a spare minute to enjoy a book. But twenty minutes now, an hour later, and you’ll finish “Harbor Lights” in no time.

You’ll have no problem at all entering the tattered world inside this book, or diving into the addicting tales. Author James Lee Burke encapsulates his storytelling prowess in smaller bites that can be taken alone or as a whole. Put them end to end, though, and you’ll see that the tales are linked, subtly and loudly, with turns of phrase, names, and places that wink at readers and keep the stories tied. You’ll have fun finding those little breadcrumbs, even as you’re busy turning pages and trying to keep your hair from standing on end.

This short-story collection is a great introduction to Burke’s work, if you’re new. If you’re a fan already, what are you waiting for? “Harbor Lights” is waiting. Missing it is something you won’t be able to stomach.

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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. She has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. Terri lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books. Read past columns at marconews.com.