Partita | Barbara Kingsolver

The landmark new novel from the Global Bestseller, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver.

Here's my question: How does a person step in front of a train and leave everything right there?

Livia Bohusz misses her big brother, Cyrus. But since the day he took his own life, a day that changed everything, eleven-year-old Livia has also known she has no choice but to survive. Her solace is music. A gifted pianist, Livia's only escape is the quiet rapture it brings as she practices. The promise of a new life her talent might offer is intoxicating, a life away from the stifling silence that has enveloped the farm since Cyrus' death. When Livia starts college as a music major and scholarship prodigy, it feels as if a new life might begin. Immersing herself in her passions in a world where she excels, even as she struggles to fit in with more urbane classmates, she glimpses the possibilities of a life beyond the farm and her parents.

Then one springtime, the smell of reviving grass and crocuses and the sounds of songbirds fill the air, and Livia catches a glimpse of shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, muscles you wouldn't miss in the rear view: 'Who is that man?' It is a question Livia may come to wish she had never asked. Partita is Livia's story: It is a tale of thwarted ambitions, accumulated pain, of newfound hope, unexpected love, and endless resilience. It is as compelling and profound as the pieces Livia has mastered, and as heart-rending and engrossing as the music that makes, breaks and mends her.

Barbara Kingsolver is the global prize-winning and best-selling author of novels including Unsheltered, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead, as well as books of poetry, essays and creative non-fiction. Kingsolver's work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Fiction. She lives with her family in southern Appalachia.