A Still Small Voice

Written with a storyteller's grace and a poet's touch, John Reed's powerful first novel is a true adventure of the heart -- at once a passionate love story and a sweeping historical saga set against a vivid backdrop of the Civil War....

The year is 1859 as seven-year-old Alma Flynt arrives in the Kentucky town of Cotterpin Creek to begin a new life. There, Alma will have as friends, neighbors, and benefactors the magnificent Cleveland family.

With their sprawling mansion and gleaming thoroughbred horses, the Clevelands are a wonder. But from the beginning, one Cleveland draws all of Alma's attention: the youngest son, John Warren.

Alma knew they were meant for each other from their first meeting. But everything changes as war descends on Cotterpin Creek, taking John Warren to battle and sweeping his family into the chaos.

Against this turbulent backdrop, Alma will come of age. And when the fighting is over, the story of a brave young man riding off to battle becomes a haunting journey of vengeance and redemption. And for Alma, yet another journey begins on the day a tormented young soldier staggers back into her life.

A spellbinding novel of love and war from "a young writer of great promise."
— Paul Auster

Written with a storyteller's grace and a poet's touch, John Reed's powerful first novel is a true adventure of the heart — at once a passionate love story and a sweeping historical saga set against a vivid backdrop of the Civil War....

The year is 1859 as seven-year-old Alma Flynt arrives in the Kentucky town of Cotterpin Creek to begin a new life. There, Alma will have as friends, neighbors, and benefactors the magnificent Cleveland family.

With their sprawling mansion and gleaming thoroughbred horses, the Clevelands are a wonder. But from the beginning, one Cleveland draws all of Alma's attention: the youngest son, John Warren.

Alma knew they were meant for each other from their first meeting. But everything changes as war descends on Cotterpin Creek, taking John Warren to battle and sweeping his family into the chaos.

Against this turbulent backdrop, Alma will come of age. And when the fighting is over, the story of a brave young man riding off to battle becomes a haunting journey of vengeance and redemption. And for Alma, yet another journey begins on the day a tormented young soldier staggers back into her life.

Publishers Weekly

The simple, homespun narrative voice of elderly Alma Flynt establishes the tone of this often cloying historical novel. Alma looks back on her childhood in a small Kentucky town from 1859, when she is seven, to the late 19th century, having survived the Civil War and many of life's vicissitudes. An innocent, beautiful and unsullied orphan, she evolves into an innocent, beautiful and unsullied young woman. As Kentucky is a neutral state, some of the families in the town of Cotterpin Creek are pro-Union while others are Confederates, but all are as honorable as they are one-dimensional. Similarly, the slaves and ex-slaves who occasionally make appearances invariably wear their hearts of gold on their sleeves and carry themselves with a quiet dignity born of inner strength. Horses are the most prominent symbol in this book, and just as his canny characters find a use for every part of the possums and pigs they kill during hard times, so Reed manages to squeeze every last drop of meaning from his various equines, who represent slaves, human nature and just about everything else. Even when Alma is a child, she possesses a mystical moral certainty that serves as a convenient alternative to any character development. Describing her first childhood meeting with her future true love, she remarks, "I believe it was that when he saw me, and I saw him, our two souls lightened, and curled up together, rising on a breeze as faint as a horse's breath." Simplistic and sentimental, the narrative is at best a quick summer read. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

John Reed attended Hampshire College and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, and he was a contributing editor for Open City. He lives in New York City. A Still Small Voice is his first novel.