Falling Into The Silence

Falling into the Silence by Margaret Seven Wellman features a collection of short stories that meld fiction with elements of autobiography to give readers powerful glimpses into the author’s life. The themes are universal — family, the sense of home, self-discovery, getting hurt, and moving on. Maggie is the youngest child of William A. Wellman, a well-known film director, and Dorothy Coonan, Busby Berkeley dancer and actor. Margaret Seven Wellman's stories offer dazzling images from her childhood, growing up in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s, and the stories explore the beauty of home, the dynamics of family, and how family breaks us at times, pushing us to go deeper into ourselves and to embrace our identity and our path.

This book is unique and beautiful, one that stirred in me the kinds of sentiments I experienced reading the first chapters of Black Boy by Richard Wright. In reading through Wellman's stories, readers are invited to revisit the pieces of their childhood that have always been part of them. The writing is gorgeous and the author has the uncanny ability to unearth the tenderness of the human heart and the finest emotions. The writing is filled with magical realism and humanity and readers will discover in each story a gem to contemplate, a world to escape into, and characters whose company they will enjoy. There is consistency in style and the voice grabs the attention of readers relentlessly. Falling into the Silence is a fresh and moving collection for fans of short stories that are heartwarming and tender; they are stories about growing up as much as they are about the significance of home.