American Music

This luminous love story centers on Milo, a severely wounded veteran of the Iraq war confined to a rehabilitation hospital, and Honor, his physical therapist. 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 in an intricate, mysterious tapestry of stories that winds through several generations. 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. And the story of a man and woman in seventeenthcentury Turkeya eunuch and a sultans concubinewhose forbidden love is captured in music. The stories converge in a symphonic crescendo that reveals the farflung 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 limitationsAmerican Music is a brilliantly original novel told in Jane Mendelsohns distinctive, mesmerizing style.