An Unfinished Score

As she prepares dinner for her husband and their extended family, Suzanne hears on the radio that a jetliner has crashed and her lover is dead. Alex Elling was a renowned orchestra conductor. Suzanne is a concert violist, long unsatisfied with her marriage to a composer whose music turns emotion into thought. Now, more alone than shes ever been, she must grieve secretly. But as complex as that effort is, it pales with the arrival of Alexs widow, who blackmails her into completing the score for Alexs unfinished viola concerto. As Suzanne struggles to keep her double life a secret from her husband, from her best friend, and from the other members of her quartet, she is consumed by memories of a rich love affair saturated with music. Increasingly manipulated by her lovers widow and tormented by the concertos many layers, Suzanne realizes she may lose everything shes spent her life working for. A story of love, loss, sex, class, and betrayal, this psychologically compelling novel explores the ways that artists lives and work interact, the nature of relationships among women as friends and competitors, and what it means to make a life of art.