Stone by stone the basilica was being dismantled in order to be put back together again. Eachstone was painted with a number and laid with care onto pallets spread over the ground...I keptthinking about those numbered stones. Some purpose began to take shape. I began to wonderif I might re-trace and recover something of my own past, to reassemble it in the manner of thebasilica. It was a matter of looking to see if any of the original building blocks remained, andwhere I might find them.
A History of Silence is a book about a country and a broken landscape. It's about the devastationin Christchurch, after the 2011 earthquake. It's about how easily we erase stories we findinconvenient. It's about the fault lines which that cataclysmic event opened up in Lloyd Jones'understanding of his own family history.
In A History of Silence Jones embarks on a quest for the truth about his family. What happened?Why do there seem to be so few stories? Why are there so few mementos? The answers hefinds are completely unexpected and change everything.