Bellweather Rhapsody - Hardcover

Bellweather Rhapsody is funny and exuberant, twisty and captivating. Racculia tells the truth here, about art and life and the many trajectories that talent can take. She s also written the most resonant descriptions of music how it really works in the head and the heart that I ve ever read. For its darkness and its glee, I love this novel. Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra s 24-Hour Bookstore

This rich brew of a novel mixes together murder, music, and eccentric humor. In 1982, in Clinton s Kill, N.Y., a new bride murdered her husband, then killed herself, shortly after checking into room 712 of the Bellweather Hotel. In 1997, high school drama queen Alice Hatmaker checks into the same room to perform at the Statewide music festival, along with her talented twin brother, Rabbit. Alice s roommate is virtuoso flautist Jill Faccelli, whose overbearing mother runs the festival. As a snowstorm looms, Alice finds Jill hanged in one of the rooms. But when she returns with help, the body is missing, replaced by a note reading, NOW SHE IS MINE . . . Racculia thus sets the stage for a novel of dueling wills, marked by textured characterization and an ebullient storytelling style. Publishers Weekly, starred review

Witty and smartly moving, Kate Racculia s Bellweather Rhapsody offers a heart-thumping mystery of music and murder, wherein the past repeats itself, and in doing so becomes malleable again: just as an orchestral score can be rearranged to new effect, so an unsolved crime sometimes returns to shock and surprise anew and in both cases the outcomes are as unpredictable as they are suspenseful. Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods

A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from the most infamous room in the Bellweather Hotel, in a whip-smart novel sparkling with dark and giddy humor.

Fifteen years ago, a murder-suicide in room 712 rocked the grand old Bellweather Hotel and the young bridesmaid who witnessed it, Minnie Graves. Now hundreds of high school musicians, including quiet bassoonist Rabbit Hatmaker and his brassy diva twin, Alice, have gathered in its cavernous, crumbling halls for the annual Statewide festival; Minnie has returned to face her demons; and a colossal snowstorm is threatening to trap them all in the hotel. Then Alice s roommate goes missing from room 712. The search for her entwines an eccentric cast of characters: conductors and caretakers, failures and stars, teenagers on the verge and adults trapped in memories. For everyone has come to the Bellweather with a secret, and everyone is haunted.

Bellweather Rhapsody is a genre-bending page-turner, full of knowing nods to pop culture classics from The Shining to Agatha Christie to Glee. But its pleasures are beautifully deepened by Kate Racculia s skill with her characters, her melancholy, affecting writing about music, and her fearlessness about the loss and darkness that underlines the truest humor. This is a wholly winning new novel from a writer to watch.