Thrillers With Deaf Characters

I read A Maiden’s Grave by Jeffrey Deaver, years ago, and I couldn’t put it down. This is the book that turned me into a Jeffrey Deaver fan long before he became popular. Though it’s one of his earliest novels I believe maybe it is his best. This is about a bus full of Deaf school girls who end up getting kidnapped and held hostage in a deserted warehouse along with their Deaf teacher. The Deaf characters are portrayed as brave and smart as they find ways to foil their captors. Meanwhile a detective works around the clock to find them. It’s a cat and mouse game of wits until the very end.

Another great thriller is Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle. This is about a Deaf woman who has her identity stolen. Falsely accused of a crime and her bank account frozen, she and her hearing boyfriend embark on a dangerous cross-country search for the sleazeball using her ID. The Deaf woman, Dana Halter, is brilliant, headstrong and courageous.

I loved the way both of these authors dispel stereotypes of Deaf people with their positive characterizations of the Deaf as strong and intelligent.

 

Good Deaf Reads

Last week while digging through a pile of old books I came across a great mystery I’d read long ago called A Maiden’s Grave by Jeffrey Deaver. It was about two kidnappers who held a school bus full of young girls and their teachers hostage in an abandoned meat factory. The twist; the captives turned out to be deaf. What the kidnappers didn’t count on was the trouble they would encounter controlling their victims due to the deaf girls’ ability to speak silently to each other in ASL when their captors weren’t looking. Oh this was a GREAT read! Another fun book I enjoyed a couple years ago was, If You Could Hear What I See, written by deaf comedian Kathy Buckley about her childhood. Then I remembered an informative biography I read about Thomas Gallaudet way back when I was a kid called Gallaudet, Friend of the deaf. This was an old, old biography written for children published in 1964, but was really quite good, though I’m not even sure it’s available anymore. Occasionally I pick up a great “deaf” read. Flipping through the pages of some of my favorite books gave me the idea it might be fun to compile a list of good reads about deaf/hard-of-hearing people, their culture and history.

So I’ve done just that. I have only read the top two on this list, but I plan to read the rest. If you know of a good book or biography involving a deaf character or a great “deaf” non-fiction read, send me the title and author, and I’ll add it to my list. I plan to place this list on the right side of my blog too, and separate the books by genre.

1. A Maiden’s Grave by Jeffrey Deaver
2. If You Could Hear What I See by Kathy Buckley
3. Silence is Golden: A Connor Westphal Mystery by Penny Warner
4. Deafening by Frances Itani
5. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
6. Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History Of An American Community
7. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness On Martha’s Vineyard by Nora Ellen Groce
8. In Silence: Growing Up Hearing In A Deaf World by Ruth Sidransky
9. The Tailor’s Daughter by Janice Graham
10. Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby
11. MindField by John F Egbert
12. Talk Talk by T. Coraghessan Boyle
13. Deaf Women’s Lives: Three Self- Portraits
14. She Doesn’t Look Deaf by Corinne Cheatham
15. Deaf In Delhi by Madan Vasishta

If you know of a book, send the title to me, and I’ll add it!