Ransomed Voices

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. RANSOMED VOICES, in prose and poetry, captures episodes in the lives of generations of an American family in the voices of those who experienced them. This narrative passed through generations in conversation, written reminiscences, newspaper accounts, and letters, until it became the personal memory of a girl who loved stories, until all the stories merged into her own. The voices speak from their time and place: from Quaker meetings in pre-Civil War Ohio, sod houses in Nebraska, the 1890 battle at Wounded Knee; from Osceola, Nebraska during the Depression, a train traveling across the United States during World War II; from Burlington, Vermont, Luxembourg, Vassar College; from High Point, North Carolina during the Civil Rights upheavals of the early 1960s; from New York City and Pennsylvania. The title is drawn from two lines of a poem by Emily Dickinson— "Silence is all we dread / There's Ransom in a Voice—." This book is an attempt to save these voices and the lives they conjure up before they are forever lost to silence.

Raby's "courage to say what she was and what she should have been will endear readers to this text. RANSOMED VOICES is about the redefinition of what it means to be female and human, to be meaningful despite archaic structures and ghostly voices that protest her flourishing."—Ken Hada

RANSOMED VOICES is "a thoroughly engaging book that presents an astounding sweep of history..."—Alan Berecka

"Raby, a brave and lyric poet, brings to her prose the same generous vision as she does to her poems. This is an unforgettable book that does her ancestors proud in all their blessings and all their struggles."—Dr. Christopher Bursk

"[RANSOMED VOICES] is a personal story, it is a family history, yet it is your history... This book will bring back your childhood and remind you of who and why you are who you are..."—Clark H. Tester

Elizabeth Raby is the author of three full-length poetry collections: This Woman, Ink on Snow, and The Year the Pears Bloomed Twice, as well as four chapbooks. She is also the author of the cross-genre work RANSOMED VOICES (Red Mountain Press, 2013). Her poems have been translated into Romanian and she is co- author of a Romanian/English chapbook. Winner of the 2010 Elmer Kelton Award for poetry (Angelo State University), she has been nominated several times for the Pushcart. Raby is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of Vassar College (B.A. History) and Temple University (M.A. English/Creative Writing), she has lived in Santa Fe, NM since 2000.