A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all

Couldn’t put this book down ..felt like I was right there on the journey with her! Thank you for this incredible read!

Melanie Brooks tells a compelling and compassionate story. The author was 13 years old when her surgeon father was diagnosed with HIV after his own heart surgery during which he received contaminated blood. At the time, those infected were widely stigmatized. Brooks’ father didn’t want his wife and four children to be ostracized so the decision was made: his infection would be kept a secret. Brooks wanted and needed to ask questions, to talk openly with her father, her brothers, her mom, but it was as though the secret was kept even between family members. For years, there was no conversation about her father’s diagnosis. Not wanting to add to her parents’ burden, she lived with that hard silence for almost a decade. She was 23 when her father died.Considering the details of this story, it could have been only a dark and disturbing read, but it’s not. Yes, Brooks makes clear the cost of trying to compartmentalize her emotions, and she describes the confusion, pain, and loneliness of that life. We witness her struggle with her church and her faith. But we also see her in the midst of a loving, musical, high-achieving family. We see her at her father’s bedside in the weeks before he dies, as he directs her to order the Christmas gifts he wants to give. Decades after that, she allows us to observe her in meetings with a supportive and warm therapist. Throughout, she gives us vivid scenes and characters from her teens years up to today when we get to see her as a wife and mother of two, acutely aware of the serious impact of silence in a family.The author moves smoothly between the present and the past, as one might do in a conversation. In a way, that’s how her story is told—as though you were sitting across from her over coffee or drinks as she shares details from her life.Melanie Brooks has written an honest and brave story. Reading A Hard Silence was an absorbing experience.

As a teenager, the secrecy and stigma of her father’s tragic AIDS diagnosis causes Melanie Brooks to feel isolated and lonely. As an adult, she and her family give him the greatest gift as they keep vigil while he does the work of dying. As a former hospice nurse, these intimate scenes moved me deeply. Brooks writes, “I felt him go at the same time something inside me ruptured.”

"Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences," writes Brene Brown, and I would add meaningful writing. I strongly encourage you (if you haven't already) to read Melanie Brooks gorgeous and heart breaking book. Brooks' courage and honesty are the kind that lift and teach. It is so good and important to share our stories, and we are lucky when someone comes along that is so good at writing them.

This book is a deep look at one woman's experience of her family's journey through the AIDS crisis in Canada. All the love, grief, faith, and anguish that accompanied her childhood is laid bare, and she must explore the impact her family's secret had on her life. A beautiful, stunning book.

Melanie Brooks’s memoir, "A Hard Silence" is a poignant story that delves into the themes of loss, grief, faith, and the emotional toll of harboring concealed truths. The author shares a deeply personal story of her beloved physician father, who tragically received HIV-infected blood via a transfusion. It happened in the mid-80s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The family guarded the secret of his HIV-positive status until almost the moment of his death from AIDS.Through her narrative, Brooks explores the repercussions of this well-kept secret and how it hindered her ability to fully grieve her father's illness and passing. A particular scene that particularly resonated was toward the end of the book, when the author sits with her therapist, trying to finish unpacking the emotional baggage she has carried for so long, and arrives at the realization that her experiences do not mean she is “broken.”I highly recommend this book.

So delighted to have in hand my copies of yet another transformative Melanie Brooks book. With a documentarian’s focus and the emotional armor necessary for re-entering a closely held decade-long family secret, Melanie Brooks take us to the fresh air she found past that suffocating veil. Exquisitely written with big bravery and big heart, A Hard Silence helped the author process her trauma, but also is a shining reminder to the rest of us that writing can help us through and beyond. And do grab a copy of "Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma" for more of Melanie's fine writing, and for wisdom-filled interviews with authors including Andre Dubus III, Sue William Silverman, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Joan Wickersham, Kyoko Mori, Richard Hoffman, Abigail Thomas, Monica Wood, Mark Doty, Edwidge Dantict, Marianne Leone, Jerald Walker, Kate Bornstein, Jessica Handler, Richard Blanco, Alysia Abbott, and Kim Stafford.

I tore through this book in a weekend! Melanie Brooks writes a beautiful and heart-breaking account of the childhood secret she kept of her father’s HIV diagnosis and the grief she continued to grapple with as an adult. My favorite parts were the moments she had with her husband, the one person she could tell the whole story to and truly be herself with, as well as the scenes with her children where she showed them that they could talk about anything and no topic was taboo, unlike in her own childhood.

On every page Melanie's writing will bring you into her life. She intimately shares pieces of herself and of her story that will transport you - to her childhood, to her father's deathbed and to her place on her therapist's couch where she unpacked it all.Melanie, your writing is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing so intimately your life story with us. The words you use to describe the moments, the places and your feelings - brought me there. I could feel the intense love you have for your beloved father. I could feel the piece of you that left the day he died. I was moved, I was transported. I have never read anything like this- never have I felt I was there - in the room feeling what was felt, experiencing it with you.Thank you for sharing your grief and pain, and for reminding us that opening spaces for sharing feelings, even when they are hard, opens us to intimate connections and frees us from silence that is deafening, lonely and traumatizing. - Keri Fraser

A Hard Silence is a memoir about loss, grief, and the emotional cost of keeping secrets.It's a moving account of a daughter's love for her father, and the cruelty of his HIV/AIDs diagnosis in the mid-80s. We witness how a loving family was tried when the stigma and devastation of the disease were at their highest levels, and how their religious community failed them. The author relives moments of beautiful closeness as well as searing pain, and offers her own experience as a gift to the reader.