10/28/19 @ 9:15am pst - Music plays a key role in healing from hidden loss ‘The Trumpet Lesson’ explores how societal attitudes about teenage pregnanc...

Mexico – A breathtaking look at the impact of a life-long secret occasioned by 1960’s attitudes toward teenage pregnancy and race, Dianne Romain’s debut novel, The Trumpet Lesson (She Writes Press, September 24, 2019), cross-examines music, family, and friendship in recovery from a lifetime of hidden longing, shame, and grief. Fascinated by a young woman’s performance of “The Lost Child” in Guanajuato’s central plaza, painfully shy expatriate Callie Quinn asks the woman for a trumpet lesson — and ends up confronting her longing to speak of her own lost child, the biracial daughter she gave up for adoption more than thirty years before. Callie learns the value of playing and speaking from the heart. Yet, having convinced herself that she must remain silent for her daughter’s sake, Callie uses denial, dark humor, and evasion to guard her secret. She risks abandoning everyone she dares to love. But to speak, Callie must confront the deepest reasons for her silence, the ones she conceals from herself. The Trumpet Lesson was recently announced as the winner in “Women’s Fiction” for the 2019 American Fiction Awards.