Weight of a Piano

A tour-de-force about two women and the piano that inexorably ties their lives together through time and across continents--for better and for worse. In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, her husband insists the family emigrate from Russia to America--and loses her piano in the process. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy has to find a new apartment after breaking up with yet another bad boyfriend. Her living situation is complicated by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara's career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer--and the secret history of her piano--will Clara be set free to live the life of choosing.