Adam (a.k.a. Zed) Avery is the hub around which the spokes of Loud Whisper revolve. Sexy, impulsive, reckless, he is the dedicated leader of a Southern California rock band in the 1980s called The Spacs. Beneath his defiant veneer lies a sensitive, literate, generous individual. The product of an upper middle class family, Adam is never content for long with the numerous obsessions that occupy him-including drugs.
The members of The Spacs include Danny Devil, Adam´s school friend and the leveling influence on the band; Davey Dynamite, the Hispanic keyboard player; Adrian Cocksure, the sexy bass player; and Brenda Cashew, the alcoholic lead singer until Adam replaces her in that position. Other key characters are Mark and Melanie, Adam´s lovers, and Henry Langford, the reporter from the national music magazine, Nitty-Gritty.
The Spacs had begun to achieve national prominence when, at a concert at The Forum, drugged and lacking self-confidence, Adam falls from the stage, paralyzing himself from the neck down with, doctors say, no more than a ten per cent chance of his walking again.
The novel opens with this concert and quickly moves into Mark´s story. Langford has come to interview him for a feature article on Adam and The Spacs. The following chapters tell Adam´s story through interviews with the other band members and Melanie, so that the point of view changes with each chapter.
Then the focus switches to Adam in the hospital and his long struggle to recover and eventually return to the music business. The theme is recovery from drug addiction and a self-destructive life style and from the paralyzing accident caused in part by the addiction. Love is also a theme which, combined with determination and a spiritual awakening, allows Adam to pursue his recovery and return to the stage, so that the novel ends on an upbeat note, despite the harrowing experiences its central character has gone through.
