Dissonance - Hardcover

"Lenard-Cook weaves the stories of Hana Weissova and her family and Anna Cramer and her family in a seamless captivating novel." ""Dissonance" is lyrical, luminous and pitch-perfect." "The best book I've read in years is Lisa Lenard-Cook's "Dissonance,"" "[A] novel that deserves attention. . . written in polished, impressive prose." ""Dissonance" is worth reading, and as such is a fine first fiction offering. Lenard-Cook is doing something right, and is one to watch." "The descriptions of musical pieces are particularly beautiful, and many readers will be intrigued by discussions of various meanings of music...a gem of a debut novel." "A short, uncomplicated read. . . The structure is neat. It's musical, as is fitting in a book about piano players. You could probably play it on a keyboard. The dissonance of the title is resolved into harmony. . . . It's as stuffed with 'important issues' as a custard pie is with calories."

When Anna Kramer, a piano teacher in Los Alamos, New Mexico, inherits the journals and scores of composer Hana Weissova, she is mystified by this bequest from a woman she does not know. As Kramer begins to play Weissova's music, however, some of her forgotten emotions resurface. Upon reading the dead woman's journals, which begin in 1945 after Weissova is released from a concentration camp, decades-old secrets that Kramer and her family have kept buried are uncovered.