Some movements take a lifetime to understand. From Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver comes an unforgettable novel about love, loss, ambition, class, and the timeless relationship between life and art.
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Livia Cable has made peace with her life.
She has a marriage she can live with, a modest home in the farm country where she grew up, and a quiet life teaching piano.
Then an old lover calls.
Decades earlier, he knew her as Livia Bohusz—a gifted young pianist who had left home to pursue her extraordinary musical promise.
His call forces Livia to confront memories she has spent a lifetime keeping at bay: childhood loss, family fractures, ambition, abandonment, passion, and a love that changed the course of her life.
The question is whether she is ready to meet the woman she used to be.
The landscape changes. The music changes. Livia changes. But some memories keep their original rhythm.
Livia is young, brilliant, and fiercely devoted to music. Her talent offers her a way beyond the limitations of her childhood and family. She leaves home and enters a world of music, ambition, and possibility.
Then she falls in love.
Livia teaches piano in the rural community where she grew up and has built a life with her husband. She has learned to live with the past.
Until the phone rings. And suddenly, everything she thought she'd left behind begins playing again.
When Sigurd reappears, Livia is forced to remember the intense relationship that once consumed her.
Their connection was passionate. Their lives were complicated. And the consequences would follow Livia for decades.
What happens when the person who changed your life suddenly walks back into it?
A partita is a musical composition built from a series of contrasting movements. Different movements can carry different moods, rhythms, and emotional textures. Together, they create a whole.
Livia's life works the same way.
The person she was. The person she became. Every movement matters.
Music. Love. Loss. Home. Ambition. Memory. Six threads, woven through one life.
Partita explores one of life's most difficult questions: Who would we become if we had made different choices?
Livia's extraordinary relationship with music shapes her identity, ambitions, relationships, and understanding of herself.
A brief, intense relationship leaves consequences that echo across decades.
Family tragedy and grief become defining forces in Livia's life.
Livia must reconsider what it means to belong to the place—and the people—she once tried to escape.
What happens when the life you dreamed about isn't the life you ultimately choose?
The past doesn't disappear simply because we stop talking about it.
Bring Barbara Kingsolver's newest story into your hands.
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Listen to the audiobook →A literary novel about love, music, ambition, class, family, grief, memory, and art.
Read Partita and discover the story between the notes.
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