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In 1878, five-year-old Ellen Lark’s world forever changes when she loses her hearing to scarlet fever. Ellen’s mother, determined for her daughter to have a “normal” life, painstakingly teaches Ellen how to read both written text and the speech on people’s lips. With the help of a wealthy patron, she enrolls Ellen into a school for the deaf where Ellen for the first time meets others like her.
Ellen’s schooling leads her to Boston University where she becomes a student of Alexander Graham Bell and his Visible Speech method. Visible Speech allows deaf people to pronounce words as clearly as a hearing person would—though without having any understanding of what they’re saying. Ellen is initially captivated by Mr. Bell and his many dreams for a variety of inventions, but as he becomes consumed by the race to invent the telephone, Ellen begins to doubt the value of her mentor’s teachings. Her doubts only deepen after she meets Frank McKinney, a charming deaf man who runs a print shop and promotes the value of sign language.
When Mr. Bell and the Western Union both submit patents for a device that carries the human voice over a wire, there is controversy over who has won the race. In their quest for the patent, the Western Union tries to recruit Ellen to spy on Mr. Bell using her lip-reading abilities. Ellen must decide if she’ll remain loyal to Bell – despite her growing realization of his harmful teachings – or if she’ll spy on him to protect someone she loves.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Photo Credit: Rii Schroer
Sarah Marsh was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers program in 2020. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA. She is the daughter of neurosurgeon and author Henry Marsh. A Sign of Her Own is her first novel, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness. She lives in London.
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