Sound + Noise by Curtis Smith Fiction · Paperback ISBN 978-1-934081-04-4 · 164 pages · $13.50 Click on cover image to see full-size version Coming Fall 2008

There's a heartbreak between sound and noise, the place where we are our only audience.

Jackie and Tom are ordinary people living parallel lives. When their paths finally intersect, the background hum of their longings, hopes, and disappointments builds into something that neither of them could have anticipated. With deft, musical prose, Smith draws the reader into a heartbreakingly familiar story of family, community, and the accidental connections woven in between.

In Sound + Noise, Curtis Smith applies the classic philosophical question "If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one to hear, does it make a sound?" to the human condition. By turns thoughtful, funny, and bittersweet, Smith's second novel is a remarkable exploration of the resilience and complexities of the human spirit, and the liberating power of love.

"Only occasionally do I read a novel where the characters remain like old friends long after the title and plot have faded away. Curtis Smith creates such characters in Sound + Noise. Jackie and Tom are burdened with the grief and fate of a superb fictional plot, and yet they are real. I felt as though I lived in their town and watched them long before their paths crossed. Combine this visceral reality with poetic descriptions and a good deal of humor, and you find Curtis Smith's novel, a heart-rending exploration of love and loss, residing somewhere between fiction and life." - Lisa Carey, author of Every Visible Thing

"In Sound + Noise, Curtis Smith identifies, examines, and prods the boundaries we create for ourselves, dramatizing complex human beings struggling against the confines of their pasts in order to create their lives anew. His prose is both exacting and evocative; his vision displays a mind willing to take on the moral ambiguities of our day. The result is a masterly portrait of the way we live now." - Kirby Gann, author of Our Napoleon in Rags

Click here to read the first chapter of Sound + Noise.

Click here to read a critical essay about Sound + Noise.

Curtis Smith is the author of The Species Crown, a novella and stories, the novel An Unadorned Life, and two collections of short-short stories, Placing Ourselves Among the Living and In the Jukebox Light. His next book will be The Agnostic's Prayer, an essay collection. His stories and essays have appeared in over fifty literary journals. His work has been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Spiritual Writing. To visit the author's website, click here.