Elizabeth Blackwell was nineteen in Salzburg, a young pianist who wanted two things: to play music that mattered, and to be loved by Nico. He was beautiful, brilliant, impossible to read. Together they crawled beneath a concert stage to hear Pollini play Schumann, close enough to feel the music in the floorboards. For one night, she thought he was hers. Then he began to pull away. She waited for him to explain. He never did.
Seventeen years later, married to a good man and living a life that looks like enough, Elizabeth finds him again in the notes of a Chopin étude. She writes to him. He writes back. The letters become the thing she lives for, a secret she keeps from her husband even as her hands begin to fail and her career threatens to slip away. She tells herself it is only friendship. She tells herself she is fine.
A decade passes. Then comes Tuscany, and one chance. A hidden flight to Frankfurt. Three days in the city where he lives. Everything she never said, everything she still wants, finally within reach. But Russ is waiting at home, and a love that was never returned has a way of asking for everything. A novel of longing, secrets, and the silence between two notes.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE KIRKUS REVIEW OF THE MUSIC BETWEEN
“The Music Between is a lively, accomplished debut emphasizing high feeling and complexity of character. Ellen Sollinger Walker is a great new voice and a wonderful writer about music. She brings freshness and vitality to her story of the classics.”
—Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm and On Celestial Music
“The Music Between is my favorite type of fictional experience: A sumptuous symphony of surprising prose woven with an intimate narration that sews around your heart and psyche from the first page. Passionate and beautifully written, this yearning love story lingers even as it stretches across oceans and decades.”
—Rachel McMillan, bestselling author of The London Restoration and The Mozart Code
“If music be the food of love,” then Walker’s debut novel, The Music Between, is a rare feast. Rich with passion, pathos, and tender longing, the story of classical pianist Elizabeth, her husband, Russ, and her intriguing Maltese obsession, Nico, conveys the complexities of human relationships and emotion with a deftness and purity matched only by the sonatas and nocturnes that fill the pages of their lives. The result is a deeply rewarding reading experience: its graceful prose, written by a classical pianist herself, moves in harmony with the music around which the novel is composed, sounding the depths of the human heart.”
—Sean Pauzauskie, author of Stage of Fools
“A beautifully written novel, The Music Between is woven with the same lyrical precision we expect from protagonist Elizabeth, a classical musician forced to face the unanswered questions of her past. Told with remarkable vulnerability and power, Sollinger Walker’s novel will touch hearts for many generations to come.”
—C. I. Jerez, author of At the Island’s Edge
“Ellen Sollinger Walker has created an exquisite narrative that combines romance, complex marital issues, a classical music motif, and outright brilliant writing. Open it up, and you won't put it down!”
—Jon Michael Miller, author of Love and War at Kent State
“Walker deftly probes the ways in which the pain of an unrequited love can become entwined with a longing for a vanished time in one’s life, conducting a delicate concerto of a narrative that imparts its lessons with nuance and grace.
A sensitive exploration of emotional pain.”
—Kirkus Reviews
ELLEN SOLLINGER WALKER holds a music degree from Oberlin College and graduate degrees in music and psychology from Carnegie-Mellon and Eastern Michigan Universities. She has worked as a classical pianist, music instructor, and mental health counselor for over forty years.
Her stories have run in Vine Leaves Press, Storytellers Refrain, The Whitefish Review, The Heimat Review and more. Her work also appears in two anthologies, The Dillydoun Prize Anthology, Vol 1 and The Book of Life After Death (Tolsun Books).
The Music Between is her debut novel.
More at ellenwrites.net.
FORTHCOMING JANUARY 19, 2027. Hardcover with dustjacket and case laminate, 306 pages ($30). ISBN: 978-1-962931-78-6; EISBN: EISBN: 978-1-962931-81-6.
Elizabeth Blackwell was nineteen in Salzburg, a young pianist who wanted two things: to play music that mattered, and to be loved by Nico. He was beautiful, brilliant, impossible to read. Together they crawled beneath a concert stage to hear Pollini play Schumann, close enough to feel the music in the floorboards. For one night, she thought he was hers. Then he began to pull away. She waited for him to explain. He never did.
Seventeen years later, married to a good man and living a life that looks like enough, Elizabeth finds him again in the notes of a Chopin étude. She writes to him. He writes back. The letters become the thing she lives for, a secret she keeps from her husband even as her hands begin to fail and her career threatens to slip away. She tells herself it is only friendship. She tells herself she is fine.
A decade passes. Then comes Tuscany, and one chance. A hidden flight to Frankfurt. Three days in the city where he lives. Everything she never said, everything she still wants, finally within reach. But Russ is waiting at home, and a love that was never returned has a way of asking for everything. A novel of longing, secrets, and the silence between two notes.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE KIRKUS REVIEW OF THE MUSIC BETWEEN
“The Music Between is a lively, accomplished debut emphasizing high feeling and complexity of character. Ellen Sollinger Walker is a great new voice and a wonderful writer about music. She brings freshness and vitality to her story of the classics.”
—Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm and On Celestial Music
“The Music Between is my favorite type of fictional experience: A sumptuous symphony of surprising prose woven with an intimate narration that sews around your heart and psyche from the first page. Passionate and beautifully written, this yearning love story lingers even as it stretches across oceans and decades.”
—Rachel McMillan, bestselling author of The London Restoration and The Mozart Code
“If music be the food of love,” then Walker’s debut novel, The Music Between, is a rare feast. Rich with passion, pathos, and tender longing, the story of classical pianist Elizabeth, her husband, Russ, and her intriguing Maltese obsession, Nico, conveys the complexities of human relationships and emotion with a deftness and purity matched only by the sonatas and nocturnes that fill the pages of their lives. The result is a deeply rewarding reading experience: its graceful prose, written by a classical pianist herself, moves in harmony with the music around which the novel is composed, sounding the depths of the human heart.”
—Sean Pauzauskie, author of Stage of Fools
“A beautifully written novel, The Music Between is woven with the same lyrical precision we expect from protagonist Elizabeth, a classical musician forced to face the unanswered questions of her past. Told with remarkable vulnerability and power, Sollinger Walker’s novel will touch hearts for many generations to come.”
—C. I. Jerez, author of At the Island’s Edge
“Ellen Sollinger Walker has created an exquisite narrative that combines romance, complex marital issues, a classical music motif, and outright brilliant writing. Open it up, and you won't put it down!”
—Jon Michael Miller, author of Love and War at Kent State
“Walker deftly probes the ways in which the pain of an unrequited love can become entwined with a longing for a vanished time in one’s life, conducting a delicate concerto of a narrative that imparts its lessons with nuance and grace.
A sensitive exploration of emotional pain.”
—Kirkus Reviews
ELLEN SOLLINGER WALKER holds a music degree from Oberlin College and graduate degrees in music and psychology from Carnegie-Mellon and Eastern Michigan Universities. She has worked as a classical pianist, music instructor, and mental health counselor for over forty years.
Her stories have run in Vine Leaves Press, Storytellers Refrain, The Whitefish Review, The Heimat Review and more. Her work also appears in two anthologies, The Dillydoun Prize Anthology, Vol 1 and The Book of Life After Death (Tolsun Books).
The Music Between is her debut novel.
More at ellenwrites.net.
FORTHCOMING JANUARY 19, 2027. Hardcover with dustjacket and case laminate, 306 pages ($30). ISBN: 978-1-962931-78-6; EISBN: EISBN: 978-1-962931-81-6.
