Liliane's Balcony: A Novella of Fallingwater

Past meets present in Kelcey Parker's (For Sale By Owner) second book, as she erects an expertly cantilevered world upon the foundation of Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater. This multi-layered novella brings a variety of voices into conversation, grafting the preoccupations of four modern-day visitors into the house's haunting history. Liliane Kauffman, original lady of the house, who married within her own family's Pittsburgh department-store empire, found herself in a union that yielded the luxuries of the house itself, of portraits and private balconies, but not of her husband's fidelity. Liliane's marital dissonance resonates against the weight of the relationships each tourist%E2%80%94a motorcycle rebel, a young clairvoyant, a drifting couple with disparate dreams, and a woman clawing her way through grief%E2%80%94carries through the house, as Fallingwater hums with the stories flowing through. Readers skeptical of the short form or the experimental shape of a multi-voiced, time-jumping narrative have nothing to fear. Parker deftly weaves each character's spidery thread into a rich meditation on the natural and built worlds, the lasting and the passing. The present echoes the past that thrums beneath the roar of the falls, and Parker delivers a symphony of histories both real and imagined. (Oct.)