
"Silence Fell," by Josephine Dickinson. This English composer and poet's life could not be fiction _ too implausible. Profoundly deaf since age 6, in her 40s she married an 85-year-old Cumbrian farmer, learned the farm ways, and took care of him to the end of his life in 2004. She has never heard these starkly beautiful poems about lambs, life, and improbable love.

