What Musicians Think about River Music

It's always nice when people that you write about like what you write.  I'm no musician, and one of the big unknowns about River Music was what musicians might think.  In fact, I was so unsure that I went out of my way not to ask musicians I knew what their opinion was.

But to my great delight, the reaction of musicians has been spontaneous and very positive. Here are three:

From pianist Jana Stuart: 

"Mary, I just finished River Music. I could not put it down. I related so much to the character of Gloria Murray and the plight of the young pianist. I loved it to pieces. "

From Madeleine Owen, lutist and artistic director, Ensemble La Cigale:

"Gloria, is tough and not always likable and yet, I had to recognize some of her  difficult choices as merely typical of what a musician, especially a woman, has to do in order to succeed in the competitive world of music."

And Cléo Palacio-Quintin, flûtiste-compositrice says: 

"River Music nous emporte dans le flot d'une vie musicale riche en émotions. Dans un rythme fluide, Mary Soderstrom transcrit avec finesse la passion intime d'une interprète pour sa musique...difficile de poser le livre avant la fin."

Progress on the Road through Time

This week I finished the revisions on Road through Time, and sent it off to the University of Regina Press which will publish it in Spring 2017.  The book, about roads as vectors of change and exchange, now has a subtitle:The Story of Humanity on the Move.   I hadn't given it one before because when I started writing I wasn't quite sure where I was going.

Now I know.

It begins with a trip my mother, my younger sister and I took in the mid-1950s from San Diego CA to Walla Walla WA. (The photo is of Laurie and me at about that time.)  It ends with the trip to South America I took two years ago, travelling a newly opened highway across the Andes from Peru to Brazil.  In between I explore where humans have wandered from the time our ancestors stood up through the Great Expansion out of Africa to the Age of the Automobile.

The book will be illustrated with some photos I've taken, some archival images and, I hope, this snapshot of two girls near the beginning of their respective journeys through life.