In the chap­ter titled “The Sound of the Sun,” the nar­ra­tive begins by con­trast­ing the glam­orous imagery of California—beaches, Hol­ly­wood, and Sil­i­con Valley—with the real­i­ty of Stock­ton, a city sig­nif­i­cant for its loca­tion at the meet­ing point of the San Joaquin Riv­er and the larg­er world. In 1975, Lin­da and Roger Adams arrived in Stock­ton with dreams of estab­lish­ing a sta­ble life for their two young boys, Kirk and Kei­th. Both had roots in Ingle­wood, where they worked hard, but were moti­vat­ed by their fam­i­lies’ migra­tions from Okla­homa to pur­sue a bet­ter life in Cal­i­for­nia.

Stock­ton has expe­ri­enced a rich his­to­ry, from the gold rush to being a hub of sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tions. How­ev­er, it has faced chal­lenges, includ­ing pover­ty and seg­re­ga­tion, under­scor­ing the com­plex­i­ties behind its diver­si­ty. The cou­ple set­tled into a typ­i­cal Cal­i­forn­ian neigh­bor­hood, grap­pling with both their hopes for a future and sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al chal­lenges stem­ming from their son Kei­th’s pro­found deaf­ness, which went undi­ag­nosed for months.

Lin­da’s con­cerns about Kei­th’s devel­op­ment were ini­tial­ly dis­missed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, but a jar­ring real­iza­tion hit her when he showed no reac­tion to a loud din­ner bell, lead­ing to a diag­no­sis at the John Tra­cy Clin­ic which con­firmed his pro­found deaf­ness. Roger’s reac­tion was fraught with anger and frus­tra­tion, see­ing the con­di­tion as a defect. As Lin­da took on the role of advo­cat­ing for her son’s edu­ca­tion in Stock­ton, she faced a dual chal­lenge: nav­i­gat­ing a new city and learn­ing about deaf­ness.

Despite the dif­fi­cult path ahead for Kei­th, the fam­i­ly was deter­mined. Lin­da exper­i­ment­ed with speech and sound aware­ness tech­niques, though these yield­ed min­i­mal results. A piv­otal moment arrived when her sis­ter Mary intro­duced sign lan­guage to Kei­th, illu­mi­nat­ing a new way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that sparked new­found engage­ment from him.

With the sup­port of Dale Delp, a sign lan­guage teacher, the fam­i­ly immersed them­selves in learn­ing sign lan­guage, fos­ter­ing a deep­er rela­tion­ship with Kei­th and enhanc­ing his under­stand­ing of the world around him. This con­nec­tion between moth­er and son high­light­ed the urgency of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, with Lin­da trans­form­ing her approach to help her son nav­i­gate his deaf­ness. The chap­ter paints a vivid pic­ture of resilience, adap­ta­tion, and the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in famil­ial rela­tion­ships amidst adver­si­ty.