The Knowledge of Water

“I will marry you,” Perdita Halley said to Alexander von Reisden at eighteen, “but not until I study music.” Now, at twenty-one, she has come to Paris, his city--but music still stands between them. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist; he is trying for the less likely one of becoming an ordinary, unhaunted man. They are drawn into an all-consuming passion that seems destined for tragedy. Perdita cannot marry and attend the Conservatoire; Alexander, still haunted by his p...