How I Grew Up is Melanie’s story. On a February night in
1954, her estranged brother-in-law entered her home with a gun and started
shooting. When he left, her mother lay dead, her father was mortally wounded,
and another brother-in-law was critically injured. Less than two weeks later,
Melanie auditions for her high school’s musical production of Rodgers’ and
Hammerstein’s Carousel. How she wins
the leading role of Julie Jordan and performs it brilliantly while her
involvement in the show helps her begin to heal is a testament to the power of
creativity in our lives.
Eli’s Heart is Krissy’s story. Just a few months prior to that Carousel production, for which she
played harp in the orchestra, Krissy had met Eli Levin, a boy her own age born
with two burdens: a prodigious musical gift and a frightening congenital heart
condition. What seemed to be a budding romance between the brilliant young
pianist and the girl he fell in love with during that summer was ended by the
interference of his family. But Krissy and Eli manage to find their way back to
each other some three years later. They marry while still college students when
they are both twenty. Their story is one of learning to live a full life
despite the odds against them.
You Are My Song is the story of Melanie’s leading man in Carousel. Jamie Logan had a voice of
unusual beauty and seemed destined to become a singer, but his high school
sweetheart didn’t want him to sing. Their marriage ended after two years,
shattering Jamie’s self-confidence. Jamie comes to realize music is vital to
his life and he returns to college to study opera. With the encouragement of
his teachers and his new love, Jamie finds the inner strength to pursue a most
difficult path, facing both professional and personal challenges along the way.
Excerpt from Eli’s
Heart:
Eli had been born with two things: a
damaged heart and a heart filled with music. That was how Krissy saw him now, and how she would
always think of him. He played for her, and she closed her eyes and opened
herself up to the music he was making.
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor began with repeated
thick chords and heavy octave passages with large leaps up and down the
keyboard, played rapidly. Eli pushed the tempo slightly; he loved doing that,
especially with Rachmaninoff. The prelude had a grandeur and sweep to it, and
demanded technical facility and strength. As with much of his music,
Rachmaninoff slowed the tempo and introduced a beautiful melody, and the music
became completely different, almost ethereal.
As soon as Eli started the lyrical section, something
happened. He could feel his hands on the keys, he knew Krissy was touching him,
but he felt he became a conduit for the music. It flowed through him and around
him, opening up time and space. He continued to have a sense of transcendence
through most of the section, and then the music gradually returned to the
original idea, the sense of being somewhere else left him, and he was again
sitting at Krissy’s piano playing Rachmaninoff for her.
When he finished the piece, he sat quietly for a
moment. When he turned to look at Krissy, he could tell by the look of wonder
on her face that she had made the journey with him. He asked softly, “Did you
feel that?” Not wanting to speak, she nodded. They sat close together without
feeling any need to talk, knowing what they had just experienced was
remarkable.
The feeling stayed with them through the long drive to
the Knoxville airport, through the wait for Krissy to board, through the kiss
“until next time,” through the drive back to Rachel’s.
Before he went inside, Eli stopped for a moment and
closed his eyes, feeling the moment resonate again, the culmination of the time
they had together. He felt joy welling up in him. He had brought them back
together, and the fairy tale would continue; only now, it would be their life.
Where can I purchase these fabulous books?
About the author
When Susan Moore Jordan was a high school student in the mid
nineteen-fifties in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a close friend went through a
shattering event just as she was preparing to audition for the high school’s
annual musical. Decades later Jordan used that experience of tragedy to triumph
to write her first novel, How I Grew Up,
in 2013. Two additional novels followed:
Eli’s Heart in 2014 and You Are My Song in 2015, completing “The
Carousel Trilogy.” All of her novels
are drawn from her life experiences as a voice teacher and stage director and
are inspired by real people she has encountered.
After attending the College-Conservatory of Music, University of
Cincinnati, Jordan moved from Cincinnati to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania
in 1971 with her late husband, a tenor, and their three young children, and
established a private voice studio in 1979. She continues to teach and students
have gone on to prestigious programs and careers in musical theater, opera, and
education.
Jordan began directing musical theater productions for high schools and
community organizations in 1984 and directed over eighty productions. She retired
from directing in 2015 and wrote about her adventures in “More Fog, Please”: Thirty-One Years Directing Community and High
School Musicals, released in November, 2015. A fourth novel, Jamie’s Children, will be released in
the summer of 2016.
All of Jordan’s books are available on Amazon in paperback. The novels
are also available on Kindle.
For more information, please visit her website at www.susanmoorejordan.com and her
Amazon author page at http://ow.ly/XCjYX
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