Why I Write About Music

 

In my book Memories of Jake, the first in a series of two about brothers who served in Vietnam and how they managed to survive it, my character Andrew Cameron is an artist. Yet music is vital to his very existence. Andrew listens to music as he paints; it inspires him. Music provides hope, comfort, and healing throughout his life, through whatever challenges he must face. Music is also part of the happiness he experiences.

Music is in every book I write. How could it not be? As a child, my engineer father, whose avocation was playing the trumpet, frequently had recordings playing on the stereo in our home. Mostly classical orchestral music, which he loved and which I came to love as well. Like many young girls, I studied piano and ballet, learning more musical literature, and I eventually discovered opera at the age of 14 by listening to a Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcast. It was, as I’ve said before, like falling in love, a love that has lasted a lifetime. Music has never failed me.

 I’ve had interesting responses to the music in my books. One reader’s review referred to my work as “music-centric” and I really like that description. Another reader, who hadn’t anticipated that music would permeate the pages, entitled her (one star) Amazon review of Eli’s Heart: “You should be an opera enthusiastic (sic) to really enjoy this.” Well, an honest appraisal from her point of view; the book is certainly full of music.The main characters are two musicians who meet at the age of sixteen.The young man, a piano prodigy,was born with a defective heart. Yet he and his love manage to enjoy a fulfilling life which includes his highly successful career—because of the music that brought them together and filled their lives.

That was my second novel, and I am now at work on novel number 15. The main character in this latest one is Andrew Cameron’s daughter Lindsey, who has wanted to be an opera singer since she was seven. The book begins in 1996, just before she completes her bachelor of music degree. It is definitely “music-centric,” and there is a great deal about the world of opera…among other things. (Maybe I should offer my one-star reviewer a complimentary copy?) Once again, my characters face challenges, and the music in their lives helps them to meet those challenges. So if you’ve read ”The Cameron Saga,” and choose to read And This Shall Be for Music when it’s released, you’ll revisit old friends and follow Lindsey’s path and that of her close friends and the man she comes to love.

 When I write about music, I describe it from the point of view of the listener or performer, or both. This excerpt is from the prologue to Memories of Jake. Andrew’s younger brother Jake has been missing for some years after returning home from Vietnam with retrograde amnesia, choosing to try to find the man he is now rather than struggle to recapture who he once was. Older brother Andrew receives a phone call from a sheriff in North Carolina, which is where Andrew was last seen. Human remains have been found and since Jake’s is an unresolved missing person case, it’s necessary to have them tested. Andrew hears back from the sheriff and puts on a recording to help him deal with this new crisis.

 ***

 Listening to this music always helped him reconnect with all the good in the universe, and when the second movement of Brahms’ Requiem started, Andrew was able to focus on the music and let it wash over him. The repeated timpani beats seemed to him the broken heartbeat of all humanity; the stately chords led into the chorus singing softly:

 Behold, all flesh is as the grass,

And all the glory of man is as the flower of grass.

For lo, the grass withers,

And the flower fades away.

 The orchestra returned, the chords changed and the powerful forward movement of the music culminated in the chorus now bursting forth full force with the repeat of the opening phrase and then dying away softly. But Brahms wasn’t done yet. An a cappella section was like a light playing through the gloom:

 Be patient for the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer waits patiently

To receive the rain.

 The entire first section was repeated. Then came the part Andrew found so powerful he had to remind himself to breathe. A complete change of mood, the sun bursting forth and completely destroying the darkness:

 But the word of the Lord endures forever …

And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

 Andrew had been introduced to the Brahms Requiem when he returned to college after his tour of duty in Vietnam. He had felt lost for a time, unable to shake the experiences of the war, no matter how hard he tried to forget them. He needed some way to reconnect with the boy he had been before he left: the boy who loved art and music and beauty and peace. Brahms’ music helped bring him back; it spoke to him of hope and a great promise. Death is not the end, it proclaimed. Not even for his lost brother, no matter what may have happened to him.

***

The remains uncovered in North Carolina, Andrew learns, are not Jake’s. Hope remains alive for his missing brother.

 Writing this book was a wonderful, gripping, emotionally wrenching, yet uplifting journey. It wasn’t easy to write, and it isn’t easy to read. But many readers have found it well worth the journey it took them on. Memories of Jake is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

To order: 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XXHJ63N/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i3