The Silence of Your Name: The Afterlife of a Suicide

Summary

The Silence of Your Name revolves around the suicide of Marshall’s charismatic and idealistic young husband, Tim Buxton, while they were in Ghana with Operation Crossroads Africa—a progenitor of the Peace Corps. Marshall weaves in her husband’s hidden family history, one tied to Boston’s wealthy social scene and the deaths of notorious Black Sun publisher Harry Crosby and Tim’s aunt Josephine Rotch Bigelow. By allowing readers to experience these distinct periods of time in great detail, Marshall illuminates the toxic effects of denial across classes and generations.

As Marshall moves on with her life, now a novelist and young widow, she must navigate her way in the ‘70s publishing world with the guidance of her friend Philip Roth, while still processing the grief of losing her husband. Decades later, Marshall finds herself in the footprints of her past, journeying to Ghana and reuniting with a royal Queen-Mother and the steadfast community that offered her its support decades earlier. As Pulitzer Prize–winning author Megan Marshall writes, she “is relentless in her quest for understanding and release from grief and guilt … but wisdom comes incrementally and her readers partake eagerly at each stage until we, too, have learned that grief may be transformed into love—and brilliant, soothing prose.”