Book Blurb:
SIGNAL FIRES opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.
On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive—a young couple expecting a baby boy—it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans’ brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife’s decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro is her first work of fiction in fifteen years and she’s back with an utterly successful book about connection, silence, marriage family, guilt and love. Shapiro creates a powerful and often poetic story using sparse but meaningful language. Her writing simply wraps itself around you like a cozy blanket. I read and listened to the audio of this book and both were delightful but I very much enjoyed that Shapiro narrated this one herself.
The characters in this book were chock full of emotion yet had such a hard time sharing their thoughts. They fell into the camp of not speaking about the elephant in the room would eventually make the elephant go away, but instead, their silence grew like a cancer. I loved how each of the Wilf kids had such unique professions and why they grew into those jobs. Young Waldo was a character you just wanted to hug and care for. I would love a book about him!
There were smart and meaningful messages whispered through this novel that made me stop and think. Small moments and quiet gestures often spoke volumes. This is a book that you’ll want to talk to about with a friend. At its heart it’s about the connectivity of people, your neighbors, your family, and all that you encounter. Every choice we make affects others for the both the good and bad. .
Highly recommend!
Quotes I liked:
This is what happens with grown children and their parents. He’s seen it in his practice. They begin to take over. They think they know best. Meanwhile, where the hell has either of them been—for years now?”
“Silence didn’t make it go away but instead drove the events of that night or deeply into each of them.”
“The stars are watching over us, Lady. They know where we are. They’ll find us.”
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