If a Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard

Jennifer Rosner's startling new memoir interrogates the very nature of hearing and being heard. When Rosner's daughters are born deaf, she is stunned. Then she discovers a hidden history of deafness in her family going back generations to the Jewish enclaves of Eastern Europe.

Rosner shares her journey into the modern world of the hearing impaired, and the tough decisions she and her husband have made about hearing aids, cochlear implants, and sign language. She also travels back in time to imagine her silent relatives who showed surprising creativity in dealing with a world that preferred to ignore them.

Throughout her imaginative odyssey, and her travails of feeling unheard as a child, Rosner's story of her daughters; hearing is at heart a story of whether a mother with perfect ears will hear her children.

If A Tree Falls is a memoir of motherhood, of hearing one's children, a guide for families with special needs children, and a poignant meditation on life's most unpredictable moments.

Jennifer Amy Rosner's writings have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Faster Times, Wondertime Magazine, and the Hastings Center Report. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.