Stradivarius

Book excerpt: An inspirational story of love and the transforming power of music, Stradivarius is a novel that will engage and delight everyone who believes that wonderful things can happen to good people. On the Korean peninsula during the freezing winter of 1951, a wounded American soldier finds a rare violin in the wall of a farmhouse where he has taken refuge. This is the beautifully told story of how a centuries old Stradivarius came to be in that unlikely place and how it changed the life of all those who possessed it. For this great instrument carries a kind of magic and all who use it are wrapped in its spell. This is also the story of two families from different cultures and different parts of the world: one rural, Baptist, Southern; the other, sophisticated, European, Jewish. The link between them is an abiding love of great music, possession of the violin, and the boy genius from the mountains of West Virginia, Ailey Barkwood. The remarkable route by which the violin reaches Ailey's talented hands, the course of love between two special but very different young people, and how great music, real genius and moral choices can alter destiny are the ingredients that make Donald Ladew's tale a novel that can be read, reread and remembered.