Emilia Oliveras met her future husband in college when both of them took their first music theory course. They immediately fell in love, but knew that neither sets of parents would be involved. She was a music scholarship student from Puerto Rico, and he was the son of a major oil family from Texas-his parents would never approve of her. This did not stop them-when they graduated college they eloped, married on the beach, and began their honeymoon on a cruise. When they made port in San Juan, Paul got off the boat to go to a museum, but Emilia didn't feel well, so she stayed in their cabin. He never came back.
Her husband's family was ready to frame her for murder but she managed to vanish and take on a new identity-from then on, she was Emily Oliver, with a daughter from her first marriage, and another daughter from her second. While this was not the life she had hoped for, she at least could teach piano, and her daughters seemed to have inherited her musical talent. But a phone message, thirty years later, changed her life again-throwing her back to a past that she never expected to revisit.
Rico's novel is being released in December, and obviously the publisher was saving the best for last. I got so caught up in this book that I found myself reading for plot and skipping her beautiful writing-now that I know what happened, I will give it a closer read. At one point, I had to put the book down for a day as I became so wrapped up in it. I highly recommend this book as a mystery and a great love story that time could not erase.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
December 24, 2024
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