When Feliu Delargo is born in late-nineteenth-century Spain - in less than happy circumstances - he is born to a Spain slipping from international power and struggling with its own fractured identity, caught between the chaos of post-empire and impending Civil War. Feliu's troubled childhood and rise to fame - including musical apprenticeships in anarchist Barcelona and at the ill-fated Madrid royal court - lead him into a thorny partnership with an even more famous and eccentric figure, the piano prodigy Justo Al-Cerraz. The two musicians' divergent artistic goals and political inclinations threaten to divide them as Spain plunges into Civil War. But as Civil War turns to World War, shared love for their trio partner - an Italian violinist named Aviva - forces them into their final and most dangerous collaboration. Set in France, Spain and Germany between 1892 and 1940, "The Spanish Bow" portrays a vibrant musical era bridging late-Romanticism with modernity and violent nationalism. Holding a mirror to the present day, it examines the fine line between heroism and self-interest, and explores the power of art to shape lives and nations.
Author Biography
Born in 1970 in Chicago, Illinois, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Among her nonfiction works are several guidebooks to Alaska and Mexico, as well as a travel narrative, Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez. Her hobbies include playing the cello. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband and two children, and is at work on a second novel about Victorian-era archaeology, set in the Middle East.
