Silencing the Drums

Grand and sweeping, this delightfully American tale splays the innocence of youth against the harsh realities of war—its unseen, veiled, and hapless victims and how they learn to cope in the transformative world after WWII. In Silencing the Drums, new author Thomas Shipley writes an allegoric and powerful tale of the tenderness and foibles of blind justice, which is found in war and everywhere. Set in the open vales of southern Virginia in the 1940’s, a goodhearted fourteen year old named Billy Grayson who has lost his father in the war finds the road to salvation is not necessarily paved with good intentions when he is sent from his native New York City to explore his Southern heritage over the course of a summer. During this summer, he and his cousin, Anna Wainwright, seek a reckoning with an evil man and the town that has abided him.