Listen

Listen, the middle-grade book and Sourland Mountain Series Book 2

Synopsis: In order to play more music in the future, Gwilym first has to deal with the past. Thirteen-year-old Gwilym Duckworthy’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It’s a day he spends with his family and friends playing football and taking part in a scavenger hunt. He is thankful for his good life. But this year, his mom calls him out of the blue wanting to reconnect with him, forcing Gwilym to deal with the complicated feelings of her leaving his family when he was just three-years-old.

Gwilym has decided he wants to learn how to play the trumpet, and when his mom tells him she’s going to be in town with her jazz band to play two nights at Princeton University, he wonders if she somehow knows about his musical dreams. Gwilym has been asked by her to meet with her alone, giving him an opportunity to find out more about his mom and why she left his family. Why did she only contact Gwilym, and what does she want from him now that so many years have gone by? Listen delves into the issue of parental abandonment and reveals how through music and forgiveness a family can discover they are more alike than they thought.

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Juvenile Fiction

Age Level: 

  • 8 - 12
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Gwilym has always loved his large and diverse family, and though he still thinks about his mom, he doesn't have much room to miss her while growing up with so many of his relatives. He's even started to become interested in music and wants to learn jazz, the music his mom plays in the band she joined after leaving him and his siblings. Then one day, Gwilym receives a text message from his mom: she's going to be in town with her band, and she wants to meet up with him.

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For nearly his entire life, it’s just been Gwilym and his siblings, and he’s perfectly content with that. Recently, his stepmother joined the family, and he is content about that as well. But there’s a missing piece that he can’t refute: his mother. His mother abandoned him when he was just a baby to play in her jazz band. Although Gwilym tries not to overthink it, the underlying resentment and curiosity has been bubbling for a while now.

 

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