As a child, Matt Hay didn't know his hearing wasn't the way everyone else processed sound - and like a lot of kids who do workarounds to fit in, even the school nurse didn't catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But as a prospective college student who couldn't pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay's condition, generated by a tumour, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast. Soundtrack of Silence was his determined compensation for his condition: a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s, whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favourite songs to memory, a mental playbook not only of the bands he loved, but a way to tap his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend Nora - the love of his life - listened to in the car on their first date. Made vivid with references to instantly recognisable songs - from The Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton - Soundtrack of Silence asks readers to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds. And, like much of the music it invokes, it's in the end a happy story: Hay does marry the girl of his dreams, complex and cutting-edge surgeries allow him via implant and linked external devices to partially hear, and he's able to share lullaby time with his and Nora's children.

A love story wrapped in a setback/comeback memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he'd fallen in love for the first time.

About the Author
Matt Hay was born and raised in Indiana. He holds a BS and MBA from the Indiana University School of Business. Throughout Matt's journey of hearing loss and recovery he held a full-time roll in media sales, but his heart remained in non-profit work within the hard of hearing community. Matt has served on the national Board of Directors for the Children's Tumor Foundation, is a Certified Cochlear Corp Advocate, a development adviser for the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf and public speaker at various hearing loss related events. Somewhere in there he did an Ironman Triathlon. He now serves as the U.S. Director of Advocacy for Neurofibromatosis at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. He currently lives in Westfield, IN with his wife/hero of 17 years and three teenage children and spends each day trying to focus on the things he can do, not the things he cannot.


Book Information
ISBN 9781250280220
Author Matt Hay
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint St Martin's Press
Publisher St Martin's Press
Weight(grams) 300g