An inspiring memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he'd fallen in love for the first time.

As a child, Matt Hay didn't know his hearing wasn't the way everyone else processed sound-and like a lot of kids who do workarounds to fit in, even the school nurse didn't catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But as a prospective college student who couldn't pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay's condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast.

Soundtrack of Silence was his determined compensation for his condition: a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s, whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favorite songs to memory, a mental playbook not only of the bands he loved, but a way to tap his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend Nora-the love of his life-listened to in the car on their first date.

Made vivid with references to instantly recognizable songs-from The Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton-Soundtrack of Silence asks readers to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds.