![]() ![]() ![]() How did you first learn of the historic, expansive deaf community on Martha’s Vineyard, and what was it about the Islanders that compelled you to write Show Me a Sign and Set Me Free? PW spoke with LeZotte via email about the inspiration behind her novels, her research into Martha’s Vineyard life in the early 19th century, and how her work as a librarian in Florida has impacted her writing. Set three years later, LeZotte’s companion novel, Set Me Free, brings Mary to a remote manor house, where she is tasked with teaching a younger deaf girl with no prior language how to communicate. Mary has no idea that deaf people anywhere are treated as anything but equal by society until, through an act of brutality disguised as scholarship, Mary is taken to Boston where she’s treated as a medical subject. The year is 1805, a time when deaf and hearing Islanders used a common sign language to communicate. The historical novel (winner of the 2021 Schneider Family Book Award) takes place on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. In her debut novel, Show Me a Sign, Ann Clare LeZotte, who has been Deaf since childhood, introduced 11-year-old Mary Lambert who, like her father and many of his ancestors, has been deaf from birth. ![]()
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