Autumn

Four Seasons #3

by Emily-Jane Hills Orford

Martha Kapakatoak is a young Inuit girl with a passion for music. She has a talent and an instrument that was passed down to her by her ancestors. She is a self-taught pianist because in Iqaluit, the capital city of Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut, there are no piano teachers. In fact, her piano is the only real acoustic piano in the entire community and it is sadly in need of repair and a good tuning. A square piano, the instrument was brought over to Canada’s far north in the mid-1800s, and dragged across the tundra on a dogsled. It is the family’s most treasured heirloom, and part of the music world’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Autumn is Martha’s story, a story that takes music from the concert hall to the vacant spaces of the northern tundra. It is a story that interweaves with the other stories from The Four Seasons series and its characters. Melanie Harris, the famous violinist from Spring (PublishAmerica, 2005), the first book in The Four Seasons series, and Hope Jones, the Gitxsan fiddler-turned-classical violinist from Summer (Baico, 2008), the second book in The Four Seasons series, join Martha in an adventure of music and mystery in a race to discover the piano’s true history and its hidden secrets before someone else gets hurt. Emily-Jane Hills Orford’s Autumn is the third book in The Four Seasons series. It follows rave reviews of the first two books, which were described as having “a classic charm” (Strings May 2008) with a plot that “grows on you with its deepening chords and situations” (Writer’s Digest 2009).

411 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Emily-Jane Hills Orford is an award-winning author of several books, including Gerlinda (CFA 2016) which received an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, To Be a Duke (CFA 2014) which was named Finalist and Silver Medallist in the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received an Honorable Mention in the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards. She writes about the extra-ordinary in life and her books, short stories, and articles are receiving considerable attention. For more information on the author, check out her website at: http://emilyjanebooks.ca

Reviews

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to goodreads FirstReads and the author for my copy of Autumn.

Autumn is the third in a series dedicated to the lives of talented Canadian musicians. This installment introduces our previous protagonists, Melanie and Hope, to Martha, a self-taught pianist from an isolated area of the far north. Like her good friends, she faces many obstacles - including the mysterious - on the road to musical and personal success.

First I wanted to thank the author for this introduction to Canadian literature and culture. It isn't a subject that I'm particularly familiar with, and I really enjoyed the peak into the diversities of Canadian life. (If the author has any further reading recommendations, I'm happy to hear them!) I've also never been much for classical music, but after the wonderful descriptions (and explanations of what I should be hearing!) it's also something that I will investigate.

Having read Spring and Summer in preparation for Autumn, I was really pleased to see Hills Orford's development as a writer. The stories that envelop our musicians get progressively deeper, as do their relationships. The strong continuity from book to book - keeping the protagonists together - is great. I also appreciated the unexpected mystery that follows all three musicians and their instruments.

One thing that I'd still like to see a little work on is the dialog. There are still instances where a character breaks out into essentially a monologue or narration, and in that way that strikes me as unnatural or not in tune with the rest of the conversation. Also, thinking of the three books in conjunction, I'm a little surprised that there aren't more personality differences between Melanie, Hope and Martha; they come from different backgrounds, have different stories, but after reading each of their volumes, I'm hard pressed to define or distinguish one from the others.

That said, once I got into Autumn, I had a hard time putting it down, which is why I gave it four stars. I look forward to the final installment of this series.