From Ashes To Song
Twenty-two-year-old Pietro’s life gets upended by a disease that destroys all the vineyards in northern Italy. Then his beloved music-teacher grandfather suddenly dies. Pietro and a friend head for the United States. Not far from Pietro’s region, beautiful Assunta’s old flame comes home from years in America to marry her and take her to the new land. On the crowded deck of the same ship, Pietro first sees Assunta, hears her voice and is smitten. She watches him play the clarinet, “as though he couldn’t separate his body from the music he played.” Pietro and Assunta’s new husband both find work in a coal mine of Pennsylvania. A complicated romance between Pietro and Assunta takes root and plays out from 1911 to 1952.
Told in short segments from Pietro’s and Assunta’s points of view, the story covers the mostly grim times of Italian and Polish miner families, childhood diseases, and Prohibition. Pietro struggles to get his music out to the world while earning a living that calluses his hands and slowly smothers his lungs. In the worst times, Pietro’s wonderful talent to compose songs and play his clarinet keeps him going. When all seems lost, Assunta’s young children and Pietro help her face the next day.
Unlike most historical fiction, in this short novel the details of place, time and events are spare, though well-chosen. For example, an important courtroom exchange is described from start to finish simply as, “‘Dismissed.’ The judge’s hammer rapped.” Hauck does not short-change readers on things that matter. The souls of two main characters, their sufferings and yearnings, their reaching out and pulling away, and music’s ability to motivate, to heal are in full view. Highly recommended for anyone seeking an unconventional heart-tugging romance.
