"A profound and riveting journey through shame and grief, A Hard Silence is, quite simply, unforgettable." Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys

NH author Melanie Brooks (Writing Hard Stories) returns to Gibson's to present her new memoir, A Hard Silence, about her family's decade long secret-keeping following Melanie Brooks's surgeon father who, after receiving a blood transfusion during open-heart surgery in 1985, learned he was HIV positive. For ten years before his death in 1995, from the time she was thirteen until she was twenty-three, Melanie's family lived in the shadow of AIDS. She carried the weight of the uncertain trajectory of her father's health and the heartbreaking anticipation of impending loss silently and alone. It became a way of life.