Nancy Burkhalter

The Education of Delhomme (eBook, ePUB)

Chopin, Sand, and La France

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

**Winner of the 2023 IPNE Book Award for Legacy Fiction**

A richly layered novel set in 19th-century France: When Frédéric Chopin's piano tuner faces execution, the only person who can save his life is his former rival, the novelist George Sand...

Beaulieu Delhomme, a piano tuner, faces the guillotine for committing treason against the newly elected French president due to his part in the bloody worker uprisings in 1848. The one person who could save him from this fate is his former arch-rival, the celebrated author, George Sand. The plot leading to his imprisonment revolves around the triangle of composer Frédéric Chopin, his lover George Sand, and Delhomme, Chopin's loyal piano tuner. Both Sand and Delhomme compete for the attention of Chopin, who fights a losing battle with tuberculosis. The president's spymaster uses this triangle to lure cash-strapped Delhomme into exploiting his friendship with Chopin to spy on George Sand, whose fiery rhetoric threatens the new president.

At first, before the uprisings that marked a tumultuous period out of which France's Second Republic grew, Delhomme favors preserving the status quo because any policy changes might jeopardize his (and Chopin's) wealthy client base. Sand wields her pen against the oppressive laws and ridicules Delhomme for his views.

Delhomme changes his opinion of the monarchy when he sees how his nephew is abused as an orphan working in a piano factory in industrial London. Delhomme becomes a double agent, paid to spy for the president while secretly working for the resistance. Sand softens her contempt when she discovers that he has switched allegiances and now promotes workers' rights.

Delhomme is caught working for the resistance, jailed in Paris' infamous Conciergerie prison, and faces a trial for treason. Even Sand's testimony is not enough to trump that of the vaunted spymaster, but her fame may be enough to persuade the new president to pardon him.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: History Through Fiction LLC
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Oktober 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781732950849
• Artikelnr.: 59754801

Autorenporträt

Nancy Burkhalter has taken a circuitous route to her first historical novel. With a BA in linguistics, she worked at a Berlitz school in Chicago. Wanting more challenge, her friend suggestedapropos of nothingthat she become a piano tuner. She sought out a master tuner, who agreed to take her on as an apprentice. She spent the next year working on piano actions and learning to tune on an old, abandoned piano she'd found in an alley. Her career led to tuning for pianists with the Dooby Brothers, Tom Jones, Pat Metheny, and classical pianist Garrick Ohlsson. She used that income to fund linguistics graduate training and eventually earned a doctorate focusing on teaching writing. She taught composition for many years in the U.S., Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Russia (and even tuned abroad, too). She used her degree in journalism as a freelancer for magazines and newspapers. When she embarked on fiction, she enrolled in many workshops and courses. The idea for this book was spawned while listening to her favorite composer, Frédéric Chopin. Who was his tuner? she wondered. And voilà! Her tale was born. The novel has braided together the two strands of her careertuning and writinginto a book about the famed composer/virtuoso pianist, and his star-crossed tuner during a tumultuous time in France's history.