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The Melody of Secrets: A Novel
Author:
Stepakoff, Jeffrey
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3619.T
Print Run: 40000
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ISBN-13: 9781250001092
LCCN: 2013020534
Imprint: Thomas Dunne Books
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
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Pub Date: 10/29/2013
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $24.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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261 pages ; 22 cm
H 8.54",
W 6.09",
D 1.04",
0.78 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Historical Fiction
Romance
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Women
FICTION / Historical / General
FICTION / Romance / Erotic
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LC Subjects:
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Astronautics, United States, History, 20th century, Fiction
Astronauts, Fiction
FICTION / Contemporary Women
FICTION / Historical
FICTION / Romance / Adult
Fighter pilots, Fiction
Historical fiction
Huntsville (Ala.), Fiction
Love stories
Married people, Fiction
Scientists, Fiction
Secrets, Fiction
Women violinists, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Air pilots, Fiction
Historical fiction
Huntsville (Ala.), Fiction
Love stories
Married people, Fiction
Scientists, Fiction
Women violinists, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| ONIX annotations | 07/20/2017 |
| Jeffrey Stepakoff's The Melody of Secrets is an epic love story set against the 1960s U.S. space program, when deeply-buried secrets could threaten not just a marriage, but a country. Maria was barely eighteen as WWII was coming to its explosive end. A brilliant violinist, she tried to comfort herself with the Sibelius Concerto as American bombs rained down. James Cooper wasn't much older. A roguish fighter pilot stationed in London, he was shot down during a daring night raid and sought shelter in Maria's cottage. Fifteen years later, in Huntsville, Alabama, Maria is married to a German rocket scientist who works for the burgeoning U.S. space program. Her life in the South is at peace, purposefully distanced from her past. Everything is as it should be-until James Cooper walks back into it. Pulled from the desert airfield where he was testing planes no sane Air Force pilot would touch, and drinking a bit too much, Cooper is offered the chance to work for the government, and move himself to the front of the line for the astronaut program. He soon realizes that his job is to report not only on the rocket engines but also on the scientists developing them. Then Cooper learns secrets that could shatter Maria's world... |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Kirkus Reviews | 10/01/2013 |
| Stepakoff's latest throws together America's burgeoning space program, Nazi scientists and a talented violinist in a Nicholas Sparks-style romance. Huntsville, Ala., circa 1957, was an interesting place. In the heart of the segregated South, it was beginning to hear the rumbles of the civil rights movement. It was also home to a unique aerospace program, one manned almost exclusively by former German SS officers. At the close of World War II, there was a race to capture the famed Nazi rocket scientists--both the U.S. and the Soviets wanted them. Under their leader, Wernher Von Braun, the group went to the U.S. with all their secrets, and the U.S. government sanitized their past. Twelve years later, in Huntsville, the space race is on--the Soviets have launched Sputnik and now the Germans are to help launch the United States' own rocket satellite into space. Maria Reinhardt is contributing in her own way: An accomplished violinist, she and some friends have founded a local symphony. With her 12-year-old son Peter away at school and her husband, Hans, working in the lab, she has ample opportunity to revisit her past, which included American pilot James Cooper. Their brief end-of-war affair was unforgettable, but when the Allied forces came, Maria left with Hans (her older second cousin) rather than wait for James and risk capture by the Soviets. At the symphony's first recital, she spots James Cooper, in Huntsville as a test pilot. What prevents Maria from running away with James is her belief that Hans is a good man. But is he? Her friend Sabine makes a chilling discovery: Her own husband has hidden a chest of gold--in the form of wedding bands and gold fillings--in their bomb shelter. What about Hans? Did he know his munitions lab was attached to a notorious labor camp? If she finds out the wretched truth, will she run away with James? Stepakoff uses this sliver of history well, but the romance between Maria and James seems irrelevant (and frankly less interesting than Maria's moral dilemmas), which is a bad sign for a romantic novel. 272pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 04/08/2013 |
| A playwright and novelist (e.g., the nicely received Fireworks over Toccoa) who has written for Emmy Award-winning series like The Wonder Years, Stepakoff tells the story of a young violinist named Maria who shelters an American pilot named Cooper shot down over her country at the end of World War II. Fifteen years later, they meet again in the American South, where Maria is living with her husband, a German scientist working for the U.S. space program. Cooper has been assigned to check up on the program and the scientists running it, which leads him to some unpleasant truths that could ruin Maria's life. With a reading group guide. 304p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 09/02/2013 |
| Readers who find suspending disbelief an uphill slog will be more than challenged by this melodramatic story from Stepakoff (The Orchard) about Maria, a German woman building a new life after WWII. In March 1945, Maria, then a teenager who is working as a music teacher, has a brief but meaningful encounter with an American soldier, James Cooper, whose parachute lands close to her cottage, near the town of Nordhausen. But they don't see each other again until 1957. Maria is now living in Huntsville, Ala., married to "solid... dependable" Hans Reinhardt, a German scientist aiding the U.S. in its arms race against the Soviets. Maria's violin performances for the local musical society have made her a local celebrity. Cooper, now a test pilot for the Air Force, ends up being stationed in Huntsville as well, and the pair considers picking up where they left off. Maria's music attracts the attention of someone even more gifted on the instrument--a precocious young African-American girl--leading to a manipulative subplot. The leaden prose does nothing to help this novel reach the pathos for which it aims. Agent: Dan Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Agency. (Nov.). 272p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013. |
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