Eight-year-old Charlie Sawyer has always understood animals. People are more difficult. Born deaf, Charlie has only a few home signs to express everything he thinks and feels. Then he enters the Kansas School for the Deaf, where hands speak, friendships grow, and words begin to give shape to his world. But learning to communicate is only the beginning. Charlie must discover whether he has the courage to share his remarkable understanding of animals-and whether this unfamiliar place might become somewhere he truly belongs. Set in 1887, Connection is the first book in the Becoming Charles Sawyer series, a tender story of language, friendship, and finding one's place in the world.