Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Quiet people are just like you and me. Except they hear more, they experience more, and they get into more trouble.... They also know what a profound force quiet can be. As a young boy, Tom stands quietly before nuns and soccer coaches, and in high school, as a lifeguard, he dutifully, quietly, keeps troubled families afloat. At summer camp surrounded by scores of rabid cheerleaders, he encounters a disturbing lack of quiet, and in college, after Mardi Gras, he wakes up, ever so quietly, to a fuzzy lost world. In Belize, he quietly watches science battle faith, and in Spokane, he witnesses how un-quiet life can be. In Montana, reading Keats gets him through tuberculosis, and in California, where he loses a brother, he returns to a place that stands far beyond speech.