West University Place is affluent, well-tended, populated by intelligent and interesting people. But like the neighborhood itself, the story reveals itself not to be at all what it first appears as it delves into the judgments women make about each other, and the divides we need to bridge to better know our neighbors—and ourselves.
The interweaving stories of two women—a Soviet concert pianist and a young mechanic in California—and their shared, devastating connection to the same Blüthner piano, its tragic history, and to each other.
How far would you go to keep the past in its place? For three very different women from two generations of coal-mining families tucked in a hollow in the mountains of southern West Virginia, the answer is: as far as they must.
When a one-time musical prodigy loses his finger, he becomes the superintendent for an eleven-story Chicago apartment building and his simple existence becomes inexorably entwined with the complicated lives of his tenants.