Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life

An inspiring memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he'd fallen in love for the first time.

As a child, Matt Hay didn't know his hearing wasn't the way everyone else processed sound--because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn't catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn't pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay's condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast.

A personal soundtrack was Hay's determined compensation for his condition. As a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favorite songs to memory. He prepared a mental playlist of the bands he loved and created a way to tap into his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend, Nora--the love of his life--listened to in the car on their first date.

Made vivid with references to instantly recognizable songs--from the Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton--Soundtrack of Silence asks readers to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds. It's an involving memoir of loss and disability, and, ultimately, a both unique and universal love story.