Among my favorite memories is one of listening to Chopin Nocturnes at the age of 10 while looking across the valley at the mist in the Koolau mountains, wondering what it was like to live when Chopin lived and envisioning someday becoming a concert pianist myself.
Since seeing Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, I have also been haunted by a vision of an angel viewing the world from the top of some beautiful old building, the camera slowly panning all the way around and away as she jumps and takes flight toward what is to be her ultimate salvation. From these two main points of inspiration was born my first novel, a memoir of a ghost, of a musician who lived in the 1920's and 30's with the same hopes and dreams of my teenage self, cut short by an untimely death. Trapped between this world and the next, she eventually discovers a young boy living in what was once her childhood home...
Set against the backdrop of the Hawaiian Islands with their rich history and legends, the two help and sometimes hinder one another on a parallel journey to uncover the secrets of their past. Together, they also discover that music not only has the power to bind the living and the dead, but the power to heal and free us as well.
