So Faithful a Heart
This has been a good year for books on reincarnation. At the tail end of spring, Andrea and Bruce Leininger came out with Soul Survivor, a compelling story about their attempts to unravel the mystery of the memories their young son had of being a WWII pilot. Then this fall, Jessica Jewett published Unveiled: Fannie Chamberlain Revealed about her struggles to accept her past life as the wife of Civil War hero and governor of Maine, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
Recently, K. Lynette Erwin also came out with So Faithful a Heart, a romance novel about the relationship between Mozart and the opera singer, Nancy Storace. I’ll let you in on a secret regarding that one. While it is being presented as a work of fiction, it is based on her and her beloved’s detailed memories of being Storace and Mozart. Like most people, I take claims of famous past lives with a grain of salt. However, I have had the privilege of getting to get to know Steph and Lynette over the past couple of years and found them to be both very down to earth and spiritually balanced people. There is no doubt in my mind that their claims are indeed true.
Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, it is one engrossing read. If you do believe, that facet adds another layer of depth to the story. The following is the review I wrote for the general public.
*****
What do you do when you meet the love of your life but honor dictates that you remain married to someone else? So Faithful a Heart is about the intricacies of a very complicated relationship between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and opera singer Nancy Storace. It has a lot to recommend it – history, drama, and a romance so compelling that it can touch even the heart of an avowed non-romantic like me.
History and opera buffs will revel in the details about backstage life in 1700’s Austria. Erwin brings the reader fully into all the intrigue, rivalries, and politics of the time. Deftly written, the world she draws is lively and colorful. She also covers some of the social conventions of the culture in the introduction, which makes more sense of Mozart’s dilemma to the modern reader.
The portrayal of Mozart is not what the average reader would expect. Most people have formed their idea of what Mozart was like on the buffoonish portrayal of him by Peter Shaffer in Amadeus, a work that had no pretensions of being historically accurate. Instead, in So Faithful a Heart, Mozart is shown as a talented man struggling to balance his own need for Storace with living up to commitments he made before he met her. He is a flawed man, but basically a man of honor.
Likewise, Storace herself is an interesting character. We first see her as a high spirited 17 year old, anchored down by a mother who was more concerned about her own desires than that of her child. Despite being a talented and highly successful opera singer, she spends a great deal of her life under the control of others. That leads to the tragedy of a forced marriage to an abusive husband.
Indeed, tragedy and pathos punctuate the novel in ways that make the forbidden love even more poignant. They occur in ways that both serve to keep the lovers apart while increasing their need to be with the one person in their lives who could truly soothe their troubled souls. Their story is completely heart wrenching at times, causing the reader to root even harder for them.
This isn’t the sort of thing that I normally read, but did so upon the urging of a friend. I’m glad I did. I have to say, I really enjoyed it.