“In Speaker, Peter Wallace has fulfilled the ancient promise of storytelling as medicine: an immersive event from which we emerge inexorably changed.”
—Kim Rosen, author Saved by a Poem
A seemingly ordinary boy discovers he has the ability to talk with animals, and they with him. It is not at all like Dr. Doolittle.
After 14-year-old Hamish Taylor loses his father to cancer, his mother forces him to move with her from rural Pennsylvania to Brooklyn. Resentful, Hamish avoids his mother and explores his new city, which two years earlier had been struck by the catastrophe of 9/11. One day, as Hamish passes near the ruins of the World Trade Center, he is overcome by a cacophony of voices that bubble up from within him. He flees through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where a squirrel falls from a tall tree and crashes down in front of him, fatally injured. Hamish discovers he can communicate with the squirrel—and with crows nearby, and with every animal he encounters from then on.
Hamish learns he is a Speaker, one in a centuries-long tradition of rare individuals who have the ability to talk with animals, and who emerge when the world is confronted by extraordinary crises. But Hamish doesn’t know what crisis he has been called to address, and not even the animals he speaks to have the answers for him. At the same time Hamish discovers his new power, he finds that the world around him is bigger and messier than he could have imagined. In his own Brooklyn neighborhood, he encounters a ring of human traffickers. Desperate to free a Russian girl from their grasp, he realizes that Speaker or not, he has a lot to learn.
Speaker is a coming-of-age story about overcoming grief and letting go. It is the story of how a boy begins to become a man. But it is also an adventure, filled with foul-mouthed birds, dim-witted dogs, an international cast of characters, and a mysterious panther who lurks in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Speaker is available from all online outlets for books, e-books, and audiobooks. You can also order it from your local bookstore.
Print:
Ebook:
Audiobook:
You can read the first four chapters here, or listen to a first chapter below:
Advance praise for Speaker
“Peter Wallace has written an unforgettable novel about communication, trust, faith, and the power of embracing our individuality. Entertaining, thought- provoking and beautifully written, Speaker is tough-minded magical realism for the 21st century. Trust me, you’ll never talk to your pets the same way again.”
—Karen Karbo, New York Times best-selling author of Yeah, No. Not Happening.
“Part fable and part adventure story, Speaker is that rare piece of beautifully written fiction that both enchants and compels. Peter Wallace exalts in the hope and wonder of a child coming of age while exploring the deeper, more adult meanings of language. On the pages of Speaker is an imagined, stunning world where the animals have more wisdom and humor than adult humans could ever hope for.”
—Ann Garvin, USA Today best-selling author of I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around
“In his highly original debut novel, Peter Wallace creates a cast of diverse urban characters in Brooklyn revolving around a recently transplanted 14-year-old boy, Hamish Taylor, who finds that he can talk with animals. A gift he barely fathoms, he must use it to protect the community he gradually builds around himself. Somewhat like in Phillip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, Wallace combines magic realism and moral clarity in a riveting story with an intellectual undertone. It is also a love song to Brooklyn. I recommend the audiobook version because the author’s reading of his own poetic text is astonishing, as he finesses the mix of character and animal voices so perfectly.”
—Laurie Taylor, author of Said the Fly
“Hamish is an endearing and unforgettable character. This teenage boy, gifted as a Speaker to the animal kingdom, discovers he has a sophisticated mission and an array of surprising allies that puts him on par with yet deeper than Mowgli, Pi, or even snake-whispering Harry Potter. Speaker is a poignant book about the power of words and love and devotion to a higher purpose.”
—Jeffrey Davis, author of Tracking Wonder: The Surprising Path to Effortless Mastery
“Set in a contemporary Brooklyn filled with stressed-out parents, Russian mobsters, eccentric chess players, streetwise cops, and a panther who hunts her prey in Prospect Park, Speaker is the story of a real teenager with real problems who learns he has uncanny powers that can change the world. A supernatural adventure and a journey through grief and coming-of-age, Speaker is one of those rare novels that resonates with readers of all ages.”
—Arthur Goldwag, author of Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies and The New Hate
“In Speaker, Peter Wallace has fulfilled the ancient promise of storytelling as medicine: an immersive event from which we emerge inexorably changed. Masterfully weaving the polarities of the magical (yet utterly believable) voices of the animals with an unflinching navigation of the horrors human beings can perpetrate against one another and nature, Wallace transmits a potent message that we would not believe without the horror and we could not bear without the magic. Every sentence of Speaker is a surprise: an utterly original use of language and thought, yet resonating some primordial knowledge inscribed in our cells. When you close the book and walk out your door, you will find the world transformed, opened. Every living creature— the sparrow, the cat, the coyote, even the human—will be recognized as part of an intimate yet symphonic conversation that was always alive beyond your awareness. Speaker is an essential contribution to the tapestry of wisdom working to dissolve the illusory walls human minds erect against the natural world, walls that must go if we are to succeed in changing the vector of the real-life story of destruction coming to climax on our planet today.”
—Kim Rosen, author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words