Connie Hampton Connally, Conversation and Book Signing

About the author:

Connie Hampton Connally holds a BA in English from the University of Washington and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. She has taught high school English and elementary music, worked as an editor, led workshops at writers’ conferences, and written both fiction and non-fiction. Her debut novel, The Songs We Hide, was published by Coffeetown Press in 2018, and her second novel, Fire Music, will be published in April 2024. She is currently writing a third novel set in Andean Peru. Ms. Connally lives in Tacoma, Washington with her husband.

About Fire Music:

Antal Varga, a Budapest violinist, is 78 years old when a young American stranger places a yellowed music sheet into his hands. With shock he recognizes his own teenage handwriting, for he himself wrote this piece in 1945, when his city was under siege.

Desperate to talk with this American woman, Varga enlists his grandson Kristóf to translate; and he finds that the woman, Lisa, shares his family's painful heritage. Now his grandson and this young American press him for the story behind the music, and especially behind its shattered ending.

For decades he's hidden this story of war, love, jealousy, and loss. Can he bear to tell it now? Can they bear to hear it? Cautiously Varga, Kristóf, and Lisa open the music and its hard secrets, hoping that although pain has extended over generations, perhaps love will extend further still.

About The Songs We Hide:

In 1951, a grim hush has settled over Hungary. After a lost war and a brutal transition to communism, the people live under constant threat of blacklisting, property confiscation, arrest, imprisonment, and worse. In this milieu of dread, the best land of Péter Benedek’s peasant family is seized and his life upended.

Moving to Budapest for a manual labor job, Péter meets Katalin Varga, an unwed mother whose baby’s father has vanished, most likely at the hands of the secret police. Both Péter and Katalin keep their heads down and their mouths clamped shut, because silence is the only safety they know.

The two have something in common besides fear: they are singers whose very natures make the silence unbearable. When Katalin starts giving Péter voice lessons, they take an intrepid step out of hiding by making music together.

Little by little they tell each other what they cannot tell others. In their bond of trust, they find relief and unexpected happiness. Yet the hurts and threats in their lives remain, waiting.

As harsh reality assaults them again, is hope even possible? Facing their hardest trials yet, Péter and Katalin learn to carve dignity and beauty out of pain.