American Music — Jane Mendelsohn

From the author of I Was Amelia Earhart, a luminous love story that winds through several generationstold in Jane Mendelsohns distinctive mesmerizing style.

At its center are Milo, a severely wounded veteran of the Iraq War confined to a rehabilitation hospital, and Honor, his physical therapist, a former dancer. When Honor touches Milos destroyed back, mysterious images from the past appear to each of them, puzzling her and shaking him to the core.

As Milos treatment progresses, the images begin to weave together into an intricate, mysterious tapestry of stories. There are Joe and Pearl, a husband and wife in the 1930s whose marriage is tested by Pearls bewitching artistic cousin, Vivian. There is the heartrending story of a woman photographer in the 1960s and the shocking theft of her lifes work. The picaresque life of a woman who has a child too young and finds herself always on the move from job to job and man to man. And the story of a man and a woman in seventeenth-century Turkeya eunuch and a sultans concubinewhose forbidden love is captured in music. The stories converge in a symphonic crescendo that reveals the far-flung origins of Americas endlessly romantic soul and exposes the source of Honor and Milos own love.

A beautiful mystery and a meditation on loveits power and its limitationsAmerican Music is a brilliantly original novel.