Audiobook Sample

Listen to the sample to experience the story.

Please wait while we verify your browser...

Dear fellow seekers of stories that heal,

The first time I heard the rhythmic cadence of Peter Bradbury’s narration for “Ceremony”, I was sitting on a sunbaked adobe bench in Taos Pueblo, watching a medicine man prepare for a healing ritual. The way Bradbury’s voice carried Silko’s words – like smoke from a sacred fire – made me understand this wasn’t just an audiobook, but an oral tradition being honored. It reminded me of those Oaxacan evenings when grandmothers would weave stories into the fabric of night, their voices becoming the loom.

Leslie Marmon Silko’s masterpiece unfolds like a desert sunrise – slowly revealing its colors until you’re bathed in its transformative light. Through Tayo’s journey from the battlefields of World War II to the spiritual landscapes of Laguna Pueblo, we experience what few war stories dare to explore: the ceremony of homecoming, not just to place, but to self. As someone who’s documented healing rituals from the Andes to the Australian Outback, I can say Silko captures something universal about how cultures mend their broken warriors.

Bradbury’s narration is a revelation. He doesn’t merely read the text – he breathes life into its liminal spaces. When voicing the mixed-blood Tayo, his tone carries the weight of two worlds. During the poetic interludes that echo traditional Laguna storytelling, his pacing becomes ceremonial, allowing each image – the speckled cattle, the turquoise stones, the drought-baked earth – to settle in the listener’s mind like sediment. I particularly admired how he differentiates the novel’s two voices: the contemporary narrative flows like a steady river, while the mythic passages ripple with the cadence of oral tradition.

What makes this audiobook exceptional is how it honors the Native American oral tradition at the story’s heart. Listening while driving through New Mexico’s high desert (as I did last summer), the landscape described in the novel superimposed itself onto the passing mesas. Silko’s prose, already lyrical on the page, becomes incantatory when spoken – particularly in sections blending verse and prose that Bradbury delivers with shamanic precision. The scene where Tayo witnesses the dawn ceremony after his healing? I had to pull over. The combination of Silko’s imagery and Bradbury’s restrained emotion made my hands shake on the steering wheel.

The audiobook format particularly serves Silko’s nonlinear narrative structure. The way time folds in on itself – war memories blending with childhood, myth merging with present reality – feels more intuitive when heard than read. It reminded me of sitting around campfires where past and present coexist in the storyteller’s voice. Some listeners might initially struggle with the absence of clear chapter breaks (the novel flows as one continuous ceremony), but this ultimately strengthens the immersive experience.

Compared to other Native American literature audiobooks like “House Made of Dawn” or “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, “Ceremony” stands apart in its seamless fusion of personal and tribal healing. Where N. Scott Momaday’s work feels like a painted ledger and Sherman Alexie’s like a rez-yard joke session, Silko’s is a medicine bundle – containing both the wound and its cure. Bradbury’s narration understands this duality better than most academic analyses I’ve encountered.

For potential listeners: come to this as you would a sweat lodge ceremony. The heat might discomfort you at first. The darkness may feel overwhelming. But emerge on the other side, and you’ll find yourself cleansed of certain illusions about war, identity, and what it means to be whole. Pair it with Silko’s “Storyteller” for the full effect, or follow my personal ritual – listen at dawn with your feet planted on actual earth.

My only critique is that the audio production occasionally flattens the dynamic range during the most intense emotional passages. There were moments when I wished Bradbury’s voice could have risen to a shout or dropped to a whisper with more technical support. But this is minor compared to the overall achievement – this is how literature should sound when it remembers it began as breath.

With ears to the ground and heart to the sky, Marcus
Marcus Rivera