<b>Selected as one of Oprah.com&rsquo;s 20 Tantalizing Beach Reads<br>Selected as a <i>New York Times Book Review </i>Editors' Choice</b><br><br>Isabel Merton is a renowned concert pianist, whose performances are&#160;marked by&#160;a rare&#160;responsiveness to the complexities of her art,&#160;and its intensities of feeling.&#160;At the height of her career, she feels increasingly torn between the compelling&#160;musical realm&#160;she deeply inhabits, and her fragmented itinerant artist&rsquo;s life, with its frequent flights, anonymous hotels, and brief, arbitrary encounters. Away from her New York home on a European tour, Isabel meets a political exile from a war-torn country, a man&#160;driven by a rankling&#160;sense of injustice and a powerful desire to&#160;vindicate&#160;his cause and avenge his&#160;people.&#160;As their paths cross in several cities, they are drawn to each other both by their differences and their seemingly parallel passions&ndash;until a menacing incident throws her into a creative crisis, and forces her&#160;to reevaluate&#160;his actions,&#160;and her own&#160;motives.&#160;In this story of contemporary love and conflict,&#160;Hoffman illuminates the currents and undercurrents of our time, as&#160;she&#160;explores the luminous and dark faces of romanticism, and those perennial human yearnings, frustrations, and moral choices that can&#160;lead to destructiveness, or the richest art.&#160;<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>