And After the Fire by Lauren Belfer FIC Bel

In Berlin in 1783, Sara Itzig is the beloved student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, son of the great Johann Sebastian Bach.  In failing health and lacking funds, Wilhelm has been selling his father's compositions to get by.  As a wedding present to Sara, he gives her a composition that he wrote and one of his father's.  The contents of this cantata are so horrific to Sara that she hides it away so that no one can see it.

In modern day Buffalo, NY, Susanna Kessler discovers an unpublished cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach in her uncle's piano. Wondering if it really is what she thinks it is, Susanna begins the process of authenticating the discovery.  Among the many questions she has is how this piece of music came to be in her uncle's possession.  And why had he kept it hidden for so long?

The process leads her on a personal path of discovery as she tries to recover from the rape that ended her marriage.  In the course of her journey she meets Daniel Erhardt and Scott Schiffmann, both experts in Bach's music.  Through them she enters a world previously unknown to her and begins to find her way back to the person she wants to be.

I enjoyed the back story of Sara Itzig Levy and her connections to Felix Mendelssohn.  The author's descriptions of Bach's music as well as Mendelssohn's were incredibly rich and made me want to listen to the pieces she mentioned.  (So far I haven't.)  In addition, there were real struggles with the still lingering after effects of World War II and the Holocaust.  If some of the situations seemed a little too coincidental, I found it didn't matter because I cared about the characters and was fascinated by the history and descriptions.

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