The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander
Fiction
What it's about: A novel about a Blüthner piano, which for eight-year-old Katya becomes her love and passion until the family emigrates to America. Fifty years later, twenty-six-year old Clara inherits the same piano, but never learns to play and decides to sell it. In doing so she learns about its unique history.
Reviewers say: “Strong characterization and attention to detail, whether in the manufacture of a piano or in the desolate beauty of Death Valley, elevate Cander's tale about learning to let go of the past” (Booklist).
About the Author: Chris Cander graduated from the Honors College at the University of Houston, in the city where she was raised and still lives, with her husband, daughter, and son. Her first novel, 11 Stories, won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Popular Fiction, and her most recent, Whisper Hollow, was long-listed for the Great Santini Fiction Prize by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.