Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies

THE SOUND OF BLUE

Holly Payne

This exquisite and soulful journey reveals poignant truths about the quests for refuge we all pursue. Sound of Blue explores the healing power of music in the lives of three strangers during the last Balkan War.

Sara Foster has left America for the adventure of a lifetime—teaching English to the elite of Hungary—but ends up teaching in a refugee camp instead and falling in love with one of her students, a celebrated synesthete composer. When he mysteriously disappears, Sara crosses the border into his war-torn homeland, determined to return the musical masterpiece he left behind. In a perilous journey that takes her to Dubrovnik, on the Croatian Riviera, Sara meets a troubled drummer boy who holds the secret to the composer's fate...and her own.

Holly Lynn Payne’s novels have been translated into eight languages. Her most recent, Damascena, unravels the mystery surrounding a gifted orphaned girl who meets the great Persian poet and mystic Rumi and discovers the secret of the rose. Dutton/Plume published her bestselling The Virgin's Knot (2002) and The Sound of Blue (2004) Kingdom of Simplicity (2009) was nominated for a national book award in Belgium.

Available products
Book Published 2015-06-01 by Skywriter Books
Book Published 2015-06-01 by Skywriter Books

Comments

The book’s heart matches its author’s – expansive and exploding with passion. Payne’s understanding of music, especially rhythm, rings true on every page.

Holly Payne’s greatest achievement is to move the story beyond the never-ending volleys of who- did-what-to-whom into a realm where the only thing that really matters is not whether her characters are Serb or Croat but that they are refugees.

I feel like I know Luka as well as Payne does because I am a “Luka.” Like every character in Payne’s novel, I understand what it means to be a refugee, and how we are all survivors of the assembly of the hurts and slights that define us. Payne’s insightful and vividly detailed story reminds us of our common daily struggle to ensure our triumphs outpace our disappointments.

Payne employs flourishes of figurative language and poetic musings on the nature of refuge and memory.

With Holly’s intimate and poetic writing, book reader groups can comfortably travel to the tension of unfamiliar places…

A courageous, compassionate new voice filled with elegant and assured prose. Payne is a masterful storyteller who proves again to tackle ambitious subject matter with great delicacy.

Against a background of stark wartime imagery, Payne laces her tale with poetic musings on the healing and redemptive power of love.