I just reached page 100 of the 2021 novel Smithy by Amanda Desiree. The book has 520 pages. I am enjoying the novel, and I am eager to find out how the plot turns from American Sign Language research with a chimpanzee to supernatural horror.
“In the tumultuous summer of 1974, in the shadowy rooms of a rundown mansion in Rhode Island, renowned psychologist Dr. Piers Preis-Herald brings together a group of seven collegiate researchers to study the inner lives of man’s closest relative―the primate. They set out to teach their subject, who would eventually be known to the world as Smithy, American Sign Language. But as the summer deepens and the history of the mansion manifests, the messages signed by their research subject become increasing spectral.
Nearly twenty-five years after the Smithy Project ended in tragedy at Trevor Hall, questions Was Smithy a hoax? A clever mimic? A Rorschach projection of humanity’s greatest hopes and fears? Or was he indeed what devotees of metaphysics have claimed for so a link between our world and the next?”
by schuylang93