We've Moved!
Visit SDSU’s new digital collections website at https://digitalcollections.sdsu.edu
Description
What if every newborn sees something the rest of us can't? Maybe it's just that they see differently, the temperature of shadow, say, or the smell of light. But maybe they're aware of invisible forces that influence our lives. INTO THE CLUTCH OF SOUND explores this idea and opens with a plane crash in which a man named Raymond dies on December 31st, 1972. What follows are the first nine months of 1973, as Raymond's inner self, his spirit, is released into the world, leading to connections among seven other people whose lives are irrevocably changed by the crash. These characters include Raymond's secretary Teresa, an overweight woman filled with unrequited love for her dead boss; Finola, a feminist in a May-December romance, who is the sister of another crash victim; Percy, a grade school teacher, who is the cousin of a dead stewardess; Beverlee, a maid and doula, and the cousin of another crash victim; and three other people, Don, a high school janitor, his sister Mathilda, a failed singer turned maid, and Mathilda's co-worker Sandra, a Native American woman struggling to form her identity. Gradually, this tapestry of interconnection falls into relief as Raymond's spirit enters into a newborn child to help animate that new life for a better tomorrow. Because INTO THE CLUTCH OF SOUND is historical fiction, the book centers on events from 1973. The USC Trojans victory in the Rose Bowl on January 1st serves as the first frame and the :Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs on September 20th serves as the other. Between these poles the story observes the movies, music, books, fashion, and habits of the times. Whether attending a Bruce Springsteen concert at Max's Kansas City, eating take-out Chinese food, reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or watching The Devil in Miss Jones, INTO THE CLUTCH OF SOUND details a real place and time often rendered mysterious and unknowable through the haze of nostalgia. Action stretches across New York, Texas, and California, and touches on hot button issues of the day, including the Vietnam War and Watergate. Different characters confront the experience of romantic love, developing cancer, single parenthood, the creep of electronic media into corporate America, and the ways in which historical memory, whether of the Korean War or "Fiddler on the Roof," impacts the present moment, pregnant as it is with possibility. In the end, readers re-discover a distant time and place called America. It is a place at once familiar but distinct since every event refracts through characters struggling to pass, like Raymond, "into the clutch of sound."
