“An astonishing first novel,” was the early word on Jeff Hutton’s debut. The Roanoke Times said of Hutton’s novel, PERFECT SILENCE: “A splendid debut…a work of beauty that throbs with wonder and longing…Compelling and lushly imagined.” A BOOKSENSE 76 FEATURED SELECTION in 2000, Hutton traveled though Virginia and much of the northeast for readings and signings of his literary novel, following a buzz as the book was promoted as a cross between Cold Mountain and The Natural. Kirkus Reviews chimed in, “…an eminently likeable, at times stirring debut.” Publisher’s Weekly said Hutton “succeeds, producing delights for baseball and history fans as well as a tender story of self-discovery.” Reviewer Michael Wilt had this to say: “There is no shortage of baseball novels in the literary landscape, but the best are never really just about sport. To the shelf containing the best of these – Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, W.P.Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s The Celebrant, and others – Jeff Hutton's PERFECT SILENCE can be safely added.” And more, “…about a zest for life, a love of baseball, and remembering the cost of war,” The Civil War Book Review. Although not short-listed, one member of the National Book Award Committee contacted the publisher expressing her admiration of the novel. There has been periodic interest in a movie based on the novel.

Following his debut novel, Jeff was one of the authors chosen to submit a synopsis for The Godfather Returns to Random House and the Mario Puzo family. He received accolades from Puzo’s life-long editor: “I’m grateful to have considered the work of such a fine writer, and I look forward to reading his writing in the future.”

His latest book reflects his lifelong interest in landscape design entitled INSIDE OUT: The Art & Craft of Landscape Design; (Breakaway Books, May 2007).

He was recently a semi-finalist in the New England Academy of Theatre’s One Act Play Competition. His poetry has been featured in literary journals such as ARTIS Magazine and Connecticut’s Litchfield Review.

For several years Hutton wrote a monthly music column: Sound Thinking: Conversations in Music - for The New England Entertainment Digest and has written a landscape column. He will be offering a writing course at Manchester Community College beginning in the spring in addition to a landscape design course. He also teaches through a local continuing education program.

Having studied the craft of writing and literature, Hutton’s career path took varied turns. Feeding his passion for gardening and working outdoors, he studied horticulture and landscape design resulting in his starting a landscaping business in partnership with his brother. A winner of many awards for design and installation, featured in a national publication for one of his landscape projects, a frequent speaker and a teacher of a popular design course– Hutton continued to write. He authored several chapters for the Connecticut Landscape Certification Manual, wrote and illustrated two unpublished children’s books for his young children, and began five years of research and work on the novel PERFECT SILENCE. This varied experience resulted in, according to his publisher, “an incandescent prose that seems pounded out of hot iron upon an anvil.”

He is completing research and writing of a new novel, entitled THE SKIN OF THE BEAR, and has begun research on a non-fiction project about the friendship between the artists Claude Monet and Theodore Robinson. Raised on Long Island and having traveled extensively in the U.S. and Europe, Hutton lives in northeastern Connecticut with his wife, his teenage son and daughter and a golden retriever.