Lady Blues · forget-me-not

"Lady Blues is intelligently and tightly written. This is beautiful – evocative, startling, teasing, terse, soothing and suspenseful in turns. Author Aaron Paul Lazar has a wonderfully readable style, empathetic and gentle, but also frank and realistic. The characters he creates are fully rounded, flaws and all, and it’s hard not to be drawn deep into their world with them. Good food and music are recurring motifs throughout the story and so is the Genesee valley. There is so much to admire artistically in this book, and with a catchy cover and a very high standard of presentation, it is a perfectly presented piece of fiction. Very, very highly recommended." Stephanie Dagg, bestselling author of KATIE'S CAKE.

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Past and present collide when an Alzheimer’s patient’s fragile memory holds the key to solving mysteries dating back to World War II—including a long lost secret love affair.

Music professor Gus LeGarde is just doing a favor for a friend when he agrees to play piano for church services at a local nursing home. He doesn’t expect to be drawn into a new friendship with an elderly Alzheimer’s patient dubbed “the music man” or to stumble across a decades-old mystery locked inside the man’s mind.

Octogenarian Kip Sterling doesn’t know his own name—but he speaks Gus’s language, spouting jazz terms like “cadence” and “interlude” and “riff.” He’s also obsessed with “his Bella,” but nobody knows who she is.

When Kip is given a new drug called Memorphyl, he starts to remember bits and pieces of his life. Gus learns Bella was Kip’s first and only love, but their relationship was shrouded in scandal. Intrigued, Gus agrees to help search for her. Could she still be alive?

Horrified when the miracle drug suddenly stops working and patients begin to backslide, Gus panics. Can he help Kip find his beloved Bella before all the memories disappear?