Some of you may already have read Tacoma-based author Connie Hampton Connally’s novel The Songs We Hide, published in 2018 by Coffeetown Press and a finalist for the Nancy Pearl Book Award in 2019. After that the former English and music teacher spent her time working on a second novel which has already won the Scriptoria Award for literary fiction. Fire Music, thus the title, is a dual-timeline story set mainly in Hungary, part of it during and immediately after the deadly siege of Budapest at the end of World War II, part two generations later, in 2006-2007.
“Antal Varga, a Budapest violinist, is 78 years old when a young American stranger places a yellowed music sheet into his hands,” Connie told me about the story-line only recently. “Shocked, he recognizes his own teenage handwriting for he himself wrote this piece in 1945, the year his city was besieged and his life torn. Enlisting his grandson Kristóf to translate, Varga discovers that this American woman, Lisa, shares his family’s heritage of pain. She and Kristóf press Varga for the story behind the music—and especially its shattered ending. For decades he’s hidden this story of war, love, jealousy, and loss. If he re-opens the story now, will it crush them all? Or can pain, like music, be re-composed as beauty?”
Does the name Varga ring a bell with you? Though a stand-alone novel, Fire Music is connected with Connie Hampton Connally’s previous novel, which is also set in Hungary: Antal Varga is the older brother of one of the protagonists in The Songs We Hide.
Another connector is Connie’s love for music and her fascination with Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, who promoted music education in his country throughout decades of national devastation: two world wars, a revolution, fascism, and communism. “What is it like to create something beautiful—like music—amid so much suffering and injustice?” wonders Connie and found the answer which became her message to her readers: “Redemption is possible even in the hardest circumstances and even after decades of buried pain.”
The launch party for Fire Music will be at King’s Books in Tacoma on Sunday, May 5 at 2:00 p.m. Besides the book talk, there will be music (of course!) and Hungarian cookies. Connie Hampton Connally will also be at Invitation Bookshop in Gig Harbor on July 12, at the Gig Harbor Arts Festival on July 20 and 21, and at the Write in the Harbor conference on November 1 and 2.
If you can’t make it to any of these events – no worries! Fire Music will be available at King’s Books in Tacoma and can be ordered through Bookshop.org, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.
Very well done, Susanne. You are such a successful, accomplished author reflecting on another wonderful author who has just released a great book with a touching/gripping story.
Thank you, Jerry! It’s an honor and a pleasure to work with fellow authors and give back what I am given so generously, too!