Category: books

The Story Behind Sundrop Sonata

On By AnnIn books, fiction, Music and pianos, Sundrop SonataLeave a comment

A whole decade has passed since the launch of Sundrop Sonata, the first suspense tale in my series of piano-oriented novels. With the recent release of its 2nd edition under the imprint of Prairie Island Press, I have had a chance to review and update the story and found it astonishingly relevant to our situation today, ten years later.

The storyline of Sundrop Sonata came to me in a rush the summer of 2003. My mother had just died after a prolonged decline with congestive heart failure. That summer my family traveled from our Kansas home to Oregon, to visit friends who summered there in a cabin on the coast. Much of the road trip in Sundrop Sonata was inspired by our travels that summer, from the basic route, to the idyllic setting on the Oregon coast, to the river raft trip on the McKenzie River. Though we weren’t fleeing for our lives, in my imagination we were. Perhaps this was one way I set about healing the hole in my heart from my mother’s death. It was an escape from reality.

Also on that journey, we did a bit of racing through Idaho to arrive in a town with a movie theater in time for the late show. The first episode of Pirates of the Caribbean had just hit theaters and we wanted to see it. We loved the show.

The mesmerizing plot in the film gave my developing story a few notable quirks and by the time our journey was over, Sundrop Sonata had written itself in my mind. A few details had to be fleshed out, and the whole thing had to be converted from scenes in my imagination to a manuscript, but the story was there. And I was excited. I was convinced that it was a good story. My challenge was to write it so that others would enjoy it too and appreciate an escape from the reality grinding away at their lives.

That brings me to today, 2026. Once again, many of us could use a harmless escape from the severity of the atrocities brought to us daily on our news sources.

What else do we need in today’s world? We need to believe that the good guys will win in the end. We need to believe that no matter how dire the situation, we will be able to prevail. If all you have is the sincere desire to help someone else, and to make the world a better place for the coming generations, you will be able to find a way. Humans are resourceful and resilient.

Another message I wanted to share in Sundrop was the issue of integrity. We all may be lured into situations that could end up hurting those we love most. But it’s okay to resist. It’s okay to honor your morals, to stand up to temptation. If it’s important to you, you will find a way.

I wrote Sundrop Sonata for readers who enjoy the same kind of stories I enjoy, so in essence, I wrote for myself. Who am I? Who would enjoy the story? I wrote for women, for piano and music lovers, for those with adventurous hearts, and most importantly, for those who want to believe that integrity matters.

I wrote for those who believe that our words are as good as a contract, that oaths hold power accountable, and that the choices we make have ripple effects around the whole planet. I wrote for readers who believe that good-hearted people exist in every location and every time in history, and for readers who believe there are things more important than exercising selfish power over others.

With these things in mind, it’s clear that the story remains pertinent today.

What will readers gain by reading Sundrop Sonata? There are three Easy takeaways. I hope readers gain Encouragement to take action on issues that they care deeply about. I hope that they benefit with a few hours of Escape from the dire situation we face in 2026, and I hope they are ultimately Entertained as they read.

Three E’s from Sundrop Sonata:

Entertainment

Escape

Encouragement

Sundrop Sonata: a Novel of Suspense, 2nd edition is now available from Lulu.

Notes from the Heart of America

On By AnnIn books, Prairie talesLeave a comment

Recently, I ordered a book that was reviewed in a post by Jess Piper, author of the substack “View from Rural Missouri.” The book, Dear Marty, We Crapped in Our Nest, was written by Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in rural Iowa, and published by Ice Cube Press.

Cullen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 for his series on agricultural surface water pollution in Iowa. Rural Missouri, rural Iowa, and rural Kansas have many common concerns. Cullen’s hometown of Storm Lake, Iowa with its newspaper is very much like our hometowns in Cowley County. His subtitle calls the content “Notes from the Edge of the World.” Given that much of it is pertinent across the entire plains region, it seems more like Notes from the Heart of America.

Much of Cullen’s 2025 book covered topics we are familiar with here, like the decline of our rural communities, the “Brain Drain” exodus of our young people to the cities, and the effect of Big Ag policies on family farmers. Cullen wrote about the exploitation of the deep, rich Iowa soils from what the indigenous Ioway people knew for thousands of years, to the devastation of the last few decades with much of the soil washed down the rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The surface waters that people and livestock depend on became contaminated with as much as 40% of the chemicals Big Ag prescribed as necessary soil additives. That came with a hidden price tag. Iowa is the #1 state in the union for cancer statistics, largely attributable to the surface water pollutants.

Cullen referred to Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac in one chapter. Leopold promoted harmony between humans and the land they depend on. He demanded a more ethical approach to land use, like the one practiced by indigenous peoples for thousands of years, now overshadowed by the desire for cash income. But, land is a community, not a commodity. Leopold said that the oldest task in human history is to live on a piece of land without spoiling it. We are failing that task miserably.

Cullen’s final chapter offers hope and a way forward.  We have withstood many challenges in the 250-year history of our democracy, he wrote. “What the Republic cannot endure, and which gives enemies of freedom oxygen, is the contempt that has taken hold American-to-American.”

We need to talk to each other, Cullen said. But how? That question, he says, will be answered in spaces like ours, the small towns and rural places of America, “where you have to get along even when you want to spit at each other.”

The first step is to try to look through your neighbor’s glasses. We may just find out that we all want pretty much the same things: clean air and water, safe schools, good food, smooth roads, friendly neighborhoods, easy access to comprehensive and affordable health care, and the ability to prosper.

Cullen: “There is a way forward if we will only talk to each other earnestly. We know how to fix things. The Earth can heal if we let it. . .  We can break up the oligopolies that choke independence, diversity, and rural vitality. . . We can learn from the [indigenous] people to live with the land in abundance if we choose not to attempt dominion over Nature. . . We can choose prosperity for agriculture through science and good sense.

“We have little choice but to change the practices of the last half century before we burn ourselves up.”

Where do I go from here?

On By AnnIn Activism, books, Earth care, fiction, Firestorm Sonata, Nature, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, Sundrop Sonata, WritingLeave a comment

Here we are in a new year, 2026. As I consider options for my future, I realize that nothing about life is simple. If events in 2025 didn’t prove that, I don’t know what would. I entered a new decade in my life last year, and you’d think I would have it figured out by now. But such is not the case. Nothing is simple, not even in retirement. All I can do is pay attention, consider options, and choose my path.

Society frayed over the last year. Assumptions and beliefs I’d held all my life drizzled down the drain with a mess of sewage generated by the greed of people who already have too much. For most of my life I believed we were the good guys. We weren’t perfect, but we had good intentions, good dreams, and good Declarations. Our country has evolved over 250 years in our journey to be better.  The America I remember helped people, here and around the world. America provided desperate people with opportunities. We supported human rights for all. We were on the cusp of a great awakening that would stall the degradation of our beautiful home planet, Earth.

And then the money mongers took control. In only a few months, we morphed into the villain.

I had to re-evaluate my priorities. What values were still important and intact? What do I stand for? With every step I take and every breath that is still mine to breathe, I feel I must strive to protect, preserve and prolong those who are at risk, including the unique biosphere we have enjoyed on Earth.

That is why I write. There are stories inside me that beg to be shared. Perhaps they will help heal Earth, if not for me, then for my grandchildren and theirs. Ten years ago—one whole decade—I launched my first novel, Sundrop Sonata, through Amazon. Two others followed, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, and Firestorm Sonata. I’m in process of writing a fourth story in the series. The plots evolved each time until in Sonata #3, Firestorm, we catapult through environmental disaster into a bleak, technology-deprived future.

My plan for 2026, already in motion, is to pull my books from Amazon, since that huge company seems beholden to the grifters in charge. After much soul-searching, hand-wringing, and self-doubting, I encountered a viable option in Lulu.

The Lulu company was founded in 2002 by Bob Young. Its name refers to “a remarkable person, object, or idea” and can reference the company itself, as well as each creative project of the writers who use Lulu. Its mission statement: “Lulu is dedicated to making the world a better place, one book at a time, through sustainable practices, innovative print-on-demand products, and a commitment to excellent service.”

The “sustainable” part of Lulu’s mission did it for me. For the last decade, Lulu has earned Certified B Corporation status, meaning it meets high standards of social and environmental impact. To choose Lulu for my future writing projects means that I am an advocate for environmental and social change, along with the company.

My plan for 2026 is to launch 2nd editions of each Sonata novel. Hopefully before the year is gone, Book 4 will join the others along with renewed hope in our country and the world. Watch for more book news in the coming days.

A Book You Should Read

On By AnnIn books, Earth careLeave a comment

Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life by Ferris Jabr

I read about this book in Sierra but postponed ordering a copy for several months. When it arrived, I decided I must read it before the sun set on Earth Day this year. I was captivated at the dedication page. Jabr wrote a poem for the myriad parts of our planet’s system that brought tears to my eyes. He concluded, “For our living planet. For our miracle. For Earth.” Each section and chapter ended with equally beautiful poetic summaries.

Becoming Earth is a journey with an excellent tour guide. From a subterranean lab a mile and a half below Earth’s surface, to Brazil’s Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) 1066 feet above the Amazon’s canopy, from Siberia’s Pleistocene Park to massive kelp forests off the coast of California, Jabr guides his readers on a tour of the planet through its 4.5-billion-year history to the present day. He examines life forms deep underground to bacteria and bits of organic matter high in the atmosphere which provide core particles for ice crystals and cloud formation.

With a survey of scientific data accumulated in the last few decades, from various fields in the relatively new discipline of Earth system science (ESS), he describes how our home planet is one vast living system. We humans are but one small part of it.

Notable points include the concept that even Earth’s variety of minerals is unique in the known cosmos, dependent as much on the existence of life as living things depend on the chemical composition of the planet. “The chance of two planets having an identical set of mineral species is one in ten to the 322nd power. Given that there are only an estimated ten to the 25th power Earthlike planets in the cosmos, there is almost certainly no other planet [like ours.]”

We inhabit a truly unique “pale, blue dot” in the universe, where life existing deep underground has helped create the land on which the rest of us depend.

Jabr makes the point that humans have altered Earth’s surface and climate since they appeared, but that our species is not the only one which acts to alter its environment. We could learn from pre-historic events. In examining the geologic history of life on the planet, Jabr also compares our current situation to impacts of other species. “Like so many animals before us—from termites to four-ton ground sloths—humans have radically altered Earth’s crust and soils.”

Chapters cover agricultural innovations from the plow to fertilizer and other chemical additives. When we expose soil to the weather, it degrades much faster than soil can be created. “Our living planet typically requires centuries to create a single inch of fertile topsoil.”

The plastic revolution has polluted our oceans to the point where there will soon be more plastic in the seas than there is life. Spewing chemicals, especially extra carbon dioxide and methane into our air has impacted everything, acidifying the oceans, and warming the planet faster than Earth has ever before experienced.

“It has never been more important,” Jabr writes, “to reject the idea that we are masters of the planet, while simultaneously accepting our outsized influence; to recognize that we and all living creatures are members of the same garden. . . humans have a long history of trying to harness and subjugate other species. . .Breaking that cycle has never been more urgent.”

While explaining the severity of our current crisis, Jabr also emphasizes that humans have capabilities that can mitigate the worst of the consequences. If only we would. We can’t afford to wait. The time is now.

In Becoming Earth, we read about life in the most unexpected places. Literally every place on Earth is home to some form of life, whether infinitesimally small, or complex larger species such as trees, and mammals. Though science has typically considered the origin of life as something that happened on Earth, “the two cannot be separated. . .Life is Earth. Our living Earth is the miracle.” The only way for us to survive is together, with all the other life forms that share our planet.

One chapter examines the history of fire on the planet. For millions of years, conditions prevented fires since three things are necessary for a fire to burn: heat, oxygen, and fuel. It took much of Earth’s pre-history for life forms to accumulate enough organic matter that would burn, (fuel) as well as form enough free oxygen in the atmosphere that would allow a flame to burn. Life processes (photosynthesis) created that oxygen, and until the atmosphere held enough of it, fires simply wouldn’t burn. Since that time, fires have become essential for maintaining various systems on the surface.

Life also impacted the carbon cycle. Through respiration, oxygen combines with carbon to form carbon dioxide. Burning fossil fuels adds the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere faster than at any other time in Earth’s history. There have been periods in the past when the surface temperatures were much warmer, when trillions of tons of carbon were released into the atmosphere. This happened over thousands of years, however. “Humanity is releasing a comparable amount in just a few hundred years. . .throughout the greater part of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, this much carbon has never been released to the atmosphere this quickly.”

We are in uncharted territory. Nobody really knows what the consequences will be, but they most certainly will change the planet in ways we would not recognize. “If humanity does not drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, Earth will become a planet incapable of supporting the world as we have known it: the world that our species evolved in.”

As the world’s premier scientists have been telling us for decades, we are living in an escalating planetary emergency that is of our own making. “Without the necessary interventions, the planet will become inhospitable. . . to countless forms of complex life.” Jabr reminds us, though, that we are capable of preserving Earth, “the one living planet we have and the only one we’ve ever found.”

Each of us has a relationship with Earth, through our metabolic processes. Each of us is playing a duet with the planet. May our tunes all be hymns of joy.

Earth Day 55

On By AnnIn Activism, books, Earth careLeave a comment
Sharing my respect and appreciation for our home planet, a truly unique gem in the cosmos that sustains all living things. Today is Earth Day #55, and we stand on a more precarious precipice than before with a hostile leadership that chooses to ignore the warning signs of impending disaster. What kind of creature will take energy and sustenance that Earth provides free to all, and turn it all into a profit-making venture, future be damned? I think we stand alone in that category. Mine may be the first generation who fully recognizes the peril we face and the last generation with the window available to do something to prevent the worst climate disasters.
What are you doing to honor Earth? I’m leading a group (We the People of Cowley County) to fold as many origami fish as we can to share with Wisconsin Sierra Club in a unique protest against Enbridge Line 5 pipeline that endangers the Great Lakes and its human and wild inhabitants.
I’m reading a book (Becoming Earth–How Our Planet Came to Life by Ferris Jabr) with growing amazement at his research results and the growth of knowledge in my field of geology since I earned my diploma. (Stay tuned for a book report.) I highly recommend this book to all.
I’m taking steps to reduce my own and my family group’s consumption of fossil fuel energy in favor of the energy provided by our sun and Earth’s systems.
Please share the things you are doing in the comments. Thank you!

A Festive Time at College Hill Coffee

On By AnnIn books, fiction, Firestorm Sonata, Prairie talesLeave a comment

Come chat with Ann and take a look at Firestorm Sonata.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Noon until 2:00 pm

College Hill Coffee, 403 Soward Street, Winfield, Kansas

About Firestorm Sonata:

In peak condition, scout Sharenda Kamine is certain her field skills will insure her safety as she seeks supplies needed by the fortress she calls home. She must, however, prove her worth to the authoritarian commander of this isolated pocket of survivors. With reluctance, he grants her request to work alone and she heads across dust dunes of what once was southern Kansas, confident she will master any challenge she meets. But she is unprepared to find a window into the past, which simultaneously offers a future ripe with possibilities. She must decide whether she will honor her commitment to the Fort, or escape to freedom with Gran, the only family she knows.

Firestorm Sonata is the third in a series of dramatic stories featuring pianos and their families. It follows Sundrop Sonata (2016) and Sonata of Elsie Lenore (2020). Book 3, Firestorm Sonata, is the first book in the series which is set in a future with very different landscapes than we know today. A Climate Fiction tale, it explores the roles of pianos and musicians in a changing environment such as those predicted by today’s climatologists.

Known to many as the local piano tuner, few people realize that Ann Christine Fell has been a naturalist all her life and taught science in the Winfield schools before she opened her piano business. As a musician, piano technician, photographer, mother, and grandmother, she has gleaned details from a lifetime of wide-ranging experiences that bring her fictional stories to life for Kansas friends and neighbors. She lives on the edge of the scenic Kansas Flint Hills with her husband, her grandson, and her piano.

 

Firestorm Sonata: The Story Behind the Story

On By AnnIn books, Earth care, fiction, Firestorm Sonata, novels, Prairie tales, WritingLeave a comment

The third novel in my Sonata series of adventure tales featuring pianos and their families is now available on Amazon. I have mixed feelings about it. The completion of this journey has been months in the making and I’m relieved to finally get there. It’s been a lot of hard work, with repeated readings and editing through the summer, each time thinking this would be it, and each time finding more things that needed to change. I finally drew a line. This is it. Ready or not. And Firestorm is launched. May she find a path through the maze of words out there in the cyberverse and not disappoint.

Firestorm Sonata:

In peak condition, scout Sharenda Kamine is certain her field skills will insure her safety as she seeks supplies needed by the fortress she calls home. She must, however, prove her worth to the authoritarian commander of this isolated pocket of survivors. With reluctance, he grants her request to work alone and she heads across dust dunes of what once was southern Kansas, confident she will master any challenge she meets. But she is unprepared to find a window into the past, which simultaneously offers a future ripe with possibilities. She must decide whether she will honor her commitment to the Fort, or escape to freedom with Gran, the only family she knows.

This tale is a first for me, to set the events in the future. During my work on the second Sonata, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, a friend I respect, a retired college professor and elder in my community, shared an article with me. “Confronting the Climate Crisis Through Fiction: Visualizing a climate-ravaged world may actually be the key to mobilizing action.” Those who know me well know my passion for the natural world, for the planet Earth. As a college freshman 50 years ago—get that FIFTY—I took a life-changing class called “Can Man Survive?” in the biology department at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. It was based on the then-current knowledge about all the impacts our human activities had on water, air, land—and climate. We’ve known about greenhouse gasses for my entire life. Even longer. Some folks predicted serious impacts early in the industrial revolution, over a hundred years ago.

The evidence is mounting in 2023. This summer is already setting records. Extreme weather events around the world fill the news from catastrophic flooding to record-setting temperatures and untamable fires. Chile, Canada, Greece, Italy, China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Sudan, Madagascar, Zimbabwe–the list goes on. In North America, water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico hit 100+ in places, with 100% mortality in some coral reefs.

My own community cleans up after a straight-line windstorm that downed whole trees in our favorite parks and city streets, demolished our neighbor’s hay storage barn, and wreaked havoc on the county fair. Cleanup will continue for weeks. The cost has soared toward $2,000,000 already in our one small town.  And yet, we humans continue a path deemed to be disastrous for all life on the planet, just so oil companies can reap growing mega-profits at the expense of everything else we hold dear. If fictional tales set in a grim future environment will shake us into action, I decided I must try.

It’s been my privilege to offer continued piano service across south-central Kansas for nearly thirty years. I’ve kept climate records at each job, recording temperature and humidity. It’s increasingly hard to advise piano owners what their best plan of service should be. With seasonal swings in temperature and humidity becoming more unpredictable, the effects on pianos are easy to see. Tuning stability is now a figment of the imagination.

Pianos are my world. So is the prairie ecosystem. I began to ask some hard questions as I twisted those pins on my annual calls. “What’s with all the earthquakes in Kansas and Oklahoma?” In my college geology classes I learned this area is the “stable” part of the continent. Earthquakes are supposed to be extremely rare. And yet here we are.

“What about the wildfires?” Every year we hear about more extreme fires. California, Oregon, Texas, Idaho. There have been successive record-breaking fires that started in Oklahoma and raged across the state line into Kansas, burning hundreds of thousands of grass acres, killing animals (including livestock) that were trapped in its path.April 2016, a fire burned over 400,000 acres, the largest blaze ever in Kansas (at the time);  March 2017, 600,000 acres burned in southwest Kansas, people were evacuated from small towns in the area; December 2021—fires in northwest Kansas, fanned by winds stronger than hurricane force, burned 400,000 acres.

Then there were the Canadian fires this summer that burned for weeks, sending ash and smoke into the air across northern US. And Maui—MAUI?? An island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a drought and a spark? The death toll from the Maui fire continues to grow.

I tried to imagine what my home county would look like after an extended drought, followed by a massive firestorm. Perhaps lightning would ignite an oil spill created by one of those fracking earthquakes. Add to the mix technology that can’t receive satellite signals, towers that topple in storms, and no way to receive news from the rest of the world.

The field of stepping stones.

What would my piano family do? What would become of them and their pianos? Would it even matter anymore if basic survival was the most pressing need? Unfortunately basic survival is already the most pressing need for far too many of Earth’s creatures, including pockets of human beings.

Thus, Firestorm Sonata was born. My deepest thanks to everyone who begged for another tale, who listened when I felt discouraged, and who offered words that bolstered me to keep on writing. You all comprise the village which raised Firestorm Sonata from a small seed to fruition. May she have wings to take her beyond my imagination and in her own way make our planet and our future a little brighter for all living things.

 

Of Snow and Violins

On By AnnIn books, children's books, Earth care, fiction1 Comment

I don’t recall a time when I didn’t love books. I must have been hooked at my first page in my first picture book. Naturally, I wanted to write them also. English class in Junior High expanded my love of language. When the home economics teacher there assigned everyone to write a picture book for preschool children, a passion was born. I embarked on a lifelong adventure with words.

Though there have been lengthy gaps when I was too involved with family matters to spend time with a pen and typewriter, whenever I could  I outlined projects, made deadlines for myself, subscribed to writing magazines, and submitted my work.

One early project started with a dream.  I don’t recall my age when this dream seared itself into my subconscious, but upon recollection it was an outlandish and delightful story. In my young adulthood, married but BC (before children) I decided to write the dream story as a picture book. It involved a couple of seals and a polar bear in the Arctic, a snowman, and a violin. A violin you ask? Yes. A violin.

Not skilled with paint or colored pencils, I figured I could illustrate this Arctic story using my photographic skills. I needed only to make the characters. I designed patterns to sew stuffed animals as well as stuffed snowmen and a violin. After careful construction, I lined up the cast on a board covered with quilt batting sprinkled with glitter, set up my trusty OM-1 35mm SLR on a tripod, and headed into the morning sunshine outside the little farmhouse we rented in Morton County, Kansas.

Crowned with a bluer-than-blue sky, the still morning was perfect for the illustrative slides. I had a blast moving the characters through the plot and snapping photos of every scene. When the slides returned from the processor, I had the story and the illustrations. I submitted the idea and samples to a few children’s book publishers, and received their kind rejections. I eventually chose Plan B and took the collection of stuffed animals, a slide projector, screen, and the story to several local libraries as a guest reader for their children’s story times. Again, I had a blast and the kids enjoyed hands-on time with the characters from the story.

The years raced by. Life happened. My own children arrived. Daily routines became strictly regimented trying to keep up with everyone’s activities. Other than a session or two sharing the story with my own kids, the stuffed characters were stored away in a big plastic tub until last December.

As Christmas approached last year, I recognized there was no good reason to hide the stuffed animals away. My daughters were grown with children of their own—and half of the grandkids were already too old for picture books. Either I pull the old critters out of the closet, or I never would. I gifted a couple to my 6-year-old granddaughter for Christmas and took along the set of photos to read her the story. On our homeward journey I realized that I now had the means to publish A Very Special Snowman myself. After digitizing the illustrations and formatting a children’s book, I sent this same granddaughter her very own copy of the book featuring the Arctic characters for her 7th birthday in March.

I launched the decades-old project to the public Thursday April 20. The “Women Score Higher” conference in Wichita solicited women authors as vendors and I was happy to be able to bring a variety of books for many different readers, including the freshly published A Very Special Snowman.

A few days after 7-year-old Mia received her book in the mail, her 9-year-old sister wrote to me saying she was writing a book and wanted to know how to publish it. It makes a grandmother proud.

Even with a peaceful ending for two careless seal pups, A Very Special Snowman is a little sad for me. Since those days of innocence long ago, the emergency situation in the Arctic has escalated as our warming Earth melts the polar ice. The fate of Arctic animals like polar bears and seals has taken a perilous turn since my early writing years.

But every stage of this project has been a thrill for me—from the dream, to construction of the characters, to photographing the scenes, telling the story, and designing a book in 2023. And the piercing blue sky in the photos of 1979 amazes me still, a reminder that this precious planet is very much worth defending for all of us, polar bears and seals included.

 

 

Who is Elsie Lenore?

On By AnnIn books, Cuba, fiction, Music and pianos, novels, Prairie tales, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, WritingLeave a comment

The fourth book I have available at the Christmasland Writers of the Wheat event is a sequel to Sundrop Sonata, the 2020 suspense novel Sonata of Elsie Lenore.  Released just before COVID shut everything down, Elsie had a rough launch, but she’s hanging in there.

The story begins fifteen years after Sundrop concludes. Izzy anticipates the birth of her first grandchild. Daughter Melody has married a Cuban pianist, Stefano Valdez who was stranded in New Orleans (or what was left of it) after a horrific tropical storm battered the area.  Mel’s interest in relief work dates to the time her mother compromised the family’s safety to help an orphan girl.  Her work takes her to disaster sites from coast to coast in a world increasingly plagued by intense storms.

With his career thriving and a baby on the way, life looks good to Stefano Valdez until a postcard from the past shatters his world. Days before the expected birth, he heads south to find the author of the card, a sister he long believed to have perished in the storm that left him a refugee in New Orleans. Trailing her to Cuba, he unwittingly places his Kansas family in the sights of the crime ring that destroyed his sister. Will he discover the hidden message in her hastily-penned words in time to save his family?

Sonata of Elsie Lenore is Stefano’s story, from southern Kansas to Cuba and back again, where he discovers that Mel has left him to work a tsunami disaster site on the west coast.

Chapter One

LENA VALDEZ CRINGED when her husband hammered the Steinway piano lid with his fist.

His rage growing, Enrique’s knuckle bones threatened to burst through his skin. “I told you,” he said, “no more of this Lecuona crap. Do the jazz. Tonight we want the best Cuban jazz.”   The youngest of the three Diaz brothers punctuated every other syllable with his fist until the piano’s heavy bass strings vibrated with a rising cacophony.

She shrank from every blow.

“Understand?” he yelled.

“Sí, Enrique,” she said.

“Get to the jazz. I’m counting on you tonight. ¿Comprendes?”

She looked down, her fingers rubbing the familiar ivory ridges of the piano keys.

“¿Lena?” he said.

She felt rather than saw his arm rise and spoke with haste. “Please, Enrique. Don’t hit the piano.”

“Jazz then. Hear me?”

She nodded. Yes, she heard him. How could she not? She could hardly recall a time he spoke to her without yelling. “Sí, I will play jazz.”

“One hour. Then we dress for the show. No more Lecuona.”

She flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and leaned into the keys. A recent island melody by Jorge Marin swelled from the piano. Swinging with the beat, Enrique danced out the door of the Caribbean Breeze, a nightclub in New Orleans.

Her hands flew over the keys as she coaxed melodious rhythms from the worn Steinway. It wasn’t that she hated jazz. After all, jazz expressed Cuba’s heart and soul. It sang of the courage and beauty of her countrymen. She loved jazz, but she loved classics more and she needed Lecuona right now. Their mother raised her and her brother on Lecuona, embracing classical Cuban tradition.

Lena completed the Marin number and stifled a sob.

“You okay Señorita?” Roberto, the bartender and manager of the nightclub, peeked in from a back room.

She nodded. “I will be fine.”

“I heard some yelling,” he said  and  cocked his  head,  inviting her to say more.

She forced a laugh.  “Enrique. He’s always yelling,” she explained away the outburst. “It will be fine.”

“If you’re sure.” He turned back into the storage room.

She waited a moment,  gathering her nerve,  her fingers silent on the piano keys. In a timid voice, she said, “Roberto?”

When  he  didn’t respond,  she  tried again,  louder.  “Roberto?”

He stuck his head through the swinging door again. “You say something?”

“I just wondered if you would tell me where I could mail a postal card.” She fished a postcard from her handbag.

“Sending greetings from good old New Orleans?” he said with a smile.

“Sí. I want to contact my brother.”

“Stefano? How is he anyway? I heard he’d tied the knot with a beauty from up north somewhere.”

She nodded. “I just want to let him know I am here. Where could I mail the card?”

He extended his hand. “Leave it with me. I’ll make sure it goes out tomorrow.”

“Gracias, Roberto.”

The bartender disappeared into the back room with her card.  Lena took a deep  breath before she  continued  her  rehearsal. If only Stefano would meet her here. Would he even get the postcard in time? He didn’t know she was booked at the Caribbean Breeze, their old favorite nightclub. Maybe he wouldn’t even believe she was here, set to perform on Mama’s piano, “Elsie Lenore.” He sure didn’t know she’d married into a family of drug smugglers or that she was miserable.

He didn’t know.

She launched into another Marin number. At its close, she whispered into the keys, “Elsie—Elsie, what will I do?”

Unexpectedly, her mother’s voice whispered in her mind. “We do what we must.”

In a flash of recollection she visualized the lewd sneer of her former stepfather as he appraised her youthful body and her mother stepping between them— “Not my daughter, you bastard!” Her mother had split up with that man before the next week passed.

A year later a new gentle suitor presented her mother with the same Steinway she’d lost after the Revolution. A gift from her father when she was young, she had fondly dubbed the piano Elsie Lenore. It was offered as a wedding gift for the woman  he’d loved all his life  and Lena’s mother could not refuse his proposal. Lena and Stefano had grown to love that piano as much as their mother did.

Her mother’s voice whispered again. We do what we must.

“Yes, we do.”  Lena’s  hands  teased  the  keys as she pondered her limited options. Elsie Lenore and her brother Stefano offered one thin thread of hope. Surely he would understand. He had to.

Her fingers caressed the keys and cajoled an Afro-Cuban piece from the belly of the piano. The melody grew, and then waned. She dropped her left hand and allowed her right hand to sketch a rhythmic melody up the keys as she diverted her left hand to the piano case.

Following the melodic sequence, she ran her fingertips to the treble end of the mahogany trim at her waist and pried upward. With a full-keyboard glissando, she moved to the bass end and inched up the trim until the keyslip was free of its mounting screws. She placed it across the music desk without the slightest click.

The music soared again when her left hand joined in. She strummed repeated staccato chords, lifted her hands at the finale, and froze, listening.

Silencio.

Roberto must have gone out for a few moments. Nobody remained inside the club.

She retrieved a set of dining utensils and a paper napkin from the nearest table and spread the napkin beneath the bass keys. Slipping the knife tip underneath a key, she scraped against the key frame, teasing a fine white dust to the edge. She repeated the process under four keys, and scraped the powder onto the napkin. Tossing the knife to the floor, she lifted the napkin’s corners, cradled the powder into its middle, and with a sigh folded it into a tiny envelope. Her brother would have been proud to know she’d learned some intricacies of piano construction. She, for her part, was grateful for his fascination with the technical side of the instrument.

“Gracias, Stefano,” she whispered.

She tucked the parcel securely into her cleavage, replaced the trim, and lost herself in the music.

 

To find out what happens next, drop by the Christmasland Event with Writers of the Wheat December 3, 4:00 pm until 9:00, at the Sunflower Plaza, 417 East Gilbert in Wichita. There will be something for every reader’s taste.

Writers of the Wheat is a loosely organized group of Kansas authors who support each other in writing, as well as marketing, their work.