In the Company of Whispers - Hardcover

The startling design of this genre-straddling book acts as a virtual time machine, carrying the narrative back and forth between the alien landscape of 1958 Burma, presented in real letters and period photographs, and a haunting vision of a future North American a century later. In 2047, Sixteen-year-old Zeyya lives in the strictly governed and not-so-distant future of the Greater East Coast Metropolis. As she pursues her musical aspirations in an increasingly dangerous world, fears of the yellow tape, that marks a dwelling as Quarantined, slip into her dreams. When the nightmare becomes reality and her parents are locked away, Zeyya takes sanctuary with her ninety-eight-year old grandmother. Zeyya's Granna, who takes solace in her childhood memories of Burma in the 1950's, lives in a solitary house in the midst of a city of bleak towers. It is not wonder that the enigmatic Jonah, who displays an imperviousness to the climate and an uncanny communication with canines, creates an atmosphere of tension that is only eased by Granna's reminiscences about her childhood in Burma. Soon, the exotic Burma and the equally exotic Jonah find places in Zeyya's heart as she learns how to both love and trust in a world gone mad.

Straddling the genres of fiction, memoir, photography and travel,"In the Company of Whispers" looks at the future through the eyes of the past. In the late 1950's, a young girl moves with her family to Rangoon, Burma. Ninety years later finds her living in the overpopulated Greater East Coast Metropolis, planted firmly in the past inside her small house until her her granddaughter, Zeyya, arrives on her front porch. In 2047, Zeyya has been living like millions of other people in a towering high rise, until her parents are taken by a Quarantine Squad. She retreats to her eccentric ninety-eight-year-old grandmother's home, the last freestanding house in the Metropolis. But whatever respite she envisions finding there is immediately imperiled by the appearance of the intricately tattooed and possibly delusional Jonah. When Granna invites him into her home, Zeyya is sure that her world will finish unraveling, but despite Zeyya's resistance, she, Granna, and Jonah become inextricably bound together. Ironically, what binds them is not what is, but what has been. The past intertwines itself into the present as Granna bequeaths her memories of a childhood spent in Burma to Jonah and Zeyya. And in the end, it is both Jonah's and Granna's pasts that determine Zeyya's future.