“My husband shot himself in our bedroom. When I got home, Emma was standing at the bottom of the stairs, screaming. ”
Since that awful day, Laura Brandon’s little girl hasn’t uttered a word. When a psychiatrist suggests that Emma won’t talk because she’s terrified of men, Laura is guilt-ridden. To help Emma, she needs to know what unspeakable secret lies behind her husband’s suicide.
Laura … suicide.
Laura thought her family was perfect, but her quest leads her to a shocking truth. For her child’s sake, should her father’s sins be kept silent?
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Breaking the Silence by Diane Chamberlain is a story of secrets and the links that connect us. Laura Brandon made a promise to her dying father. With his last breath, he desperately made her promise to visit an elderly woman, a woman she had never met before. In fact, she hadn’t even heard of her before. Sarah Tolley is a woman who suffers from Alzheimer’s and only the distant past remains as vivid as ever. Laura sees visiting Sarah as a small sacrifice to honor her beloved father. But her husband, Ray, doesn’t want her to go, claiming Sarah wouldn’t know if she came at all and certainty her father wouldn’t either but Laura insists. Keeping her promise results in another death. Ray commits suicide while she is gone visiting Sarah and their five-year old daughter, Emma, is home to witness it. Now Emma refuses to talk about it, actually she refuses to talk at all. Desperate and filled with guilt, Laura contacts the only person who may help. A man she has only met once. A man who doesn’t know he is Emma’s birth father. Will she be able to break Emma’s silence and discover the link between her father and Sarah?
Ms. Chamberlain weaves stories of intrigue and inspiration. Breaking the Silence is no exception. It is a page turner, dealing with heavy topics such as suicide, Alzheimer’s, trauma and psychiatric treatments of the 1950s, this book does not hold back. From the opening pages, you are hooked to discover the link between Laura’s father and Sarah and why she hadn’t heard of this woman before. The reason behind Emma’s silence seems pretty straightforward and even takes a backseat to Laura’s mission to find out who Sarah is to her father. Having read a few of Ms. Chamberlain’s books before, she heavily researches for her stories so when someone says something out of place or wrong, keep it in mind it may be the character’s ignorance rather than the author’s mistake. I have read many reviews that point out mistakes but I feel they fail to realize that 1) the book takes place in the year 2000, when many people still didn’t know a lot about Alzheimer’s, 2) that errors in the character’s statements are necessarily an author’s mistakes but a flaw in the characters’ understanding or 3) the error is a plot point or misdirection. Overall, I enjoyed Breaking the Silence and would highly recommend it.
Breaking the Silence is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook.
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So good! To my surprise, the sub-plot was actually the driving force of this novel and was I in for a surprise. I have never despised a character like I did in this story and that can only happen because of the expert craftmanship of a great writer. Third book I read by Ms. Chamberlain and she’s quickly becoming a favourite.
Great book
One of my favorite books. It had my full interest from the beginning. I couldn’t put it down. There were many surprises and twists. I have recommended it to many.
My favorite author, anything by her is exceptional!!!!
So every unexpected twists!
The author crafts a very interesting read incorporating significant characters!
Love this book. Hate when I got to the end
“When your passion was the sky and the stars and the planets, the insignificance of your life was a given.”
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Sooo, this was my very first @Diane.chamberlain.author book and I am completely hooked and have now added her to my “go to” author list!! This is one of her earlier books and a big thank you to @a_perfect_time_to_read (my Bookstagram “Spirit Reader”), for sharing this with me, because she enjoyed it so much and WOW! I absolutely loved this psychological/suspense story of Laura who makes a promise to her dying father to visit a woman she has never heard of and the story completely snowballs from there with so many twists and turns!! I completely recommend this for a book club that wants to solve a mystery and thoroughly enjoy themselves while doing it!
Excellent writing as usual.
Real world problems