May 2017, from Blue Moon Publishers (Toronto)

We did it!

To Love A Stranger launched on May 23! Get your copy on Amazon (Kindle or paperback), or at Barnes and Noble (paperback)!

 

About the novel:

Sam and Jeannette have two things in common: a deep passion for music and a driving need to escape from themselves. They meet in the fall of 1986, when they both arrive in Virginia to work with the Richmond Symphonic Artists, an orchestra fighting for its survival. Each of them sees the other as a lifeline. But as they struggle to save their orchestra and look for redemption in each other, their past secrets–especially Sam’s–threaten to destroy the future they’re trying to build.

Advance praise:

“How well do we know the people we love? This question is at the heart of Kris Faatz’s beautifully written first novel. With Sam and Jeannette, Faatz has created two sympathetic, deeply flawed characters, driven by loneliness and a desire to belong. Set in the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, [the] story unfolds with tragic inevitability. Compassionate and emotionally engaging, To Love A Stranger is a page-turner, a story that will resonate with the reader for a long time to come.”

– Geeta Kothari, author of I Brake For Moose and Other Stories

“To Love A Stranger …is a novel full of all kinds of love—big, messy, secret. It is a novel full of music and juicy orchestra drama rivaling Mozart In The Jungle. It is a novel full of both sweetness and sadness. Readers are safe in this author’s thoughtful hands, amidst these gorgeous words, in this world rich with the heady sounds of darkness, honesty, forgiveness. To Love A Stranger is written with the harmony of humanity in mind. To Love A Stranger is a song.”

-Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Every Kiss A War

“An incredibly beautiful and moving piece of literature. The writing flowed and the characters had such depth that you can’t not build a connection with them. A lyrical masterpiece which punches you right in the gut. It’s a book that’s hard to review because really, people should just read it. I’m looking forward to future work from Faatz.”

-Sara Marsden, NetGalley reviewer

“To Love A Stranger captures your attention and heart immediately. I had to finish it in one sitting. Ms. Faatz writes with such vividness and her characters are so genuine that you are swept into their world, and you can’t wait to read what happens next.”

– Cecelia Prinkey, pianist

“Sam Kraychek is the Maestro, in total command of the small city orchestra he conducts. But the rest of Sam’s life refuses to give in to his control, and throughout this gentle, moving book, Sam struggles to…keep secret the deepest parts of himself, especially from his soon-to-be-pregnant new wife. More than anything, [he] struggles to accept himself. To Love A Stranger is a novel filled with decent, loving people all seeking acceptance, of and from others, and from themselves most of all.

– Mark Farrington, author of Manion in Darkness

Backstory:

Kris’s first novel, begun in 2007, Stranger was inspired and informed by her own training in classical music, and the backstage world of the classical symphony. The manuscript was a finalist for the 2016 Schaffner Press Music in Literature Award.