HEARTWOOD

A magical piece of wood becomes an instrument of unpredictable power in Siegel’s historical fantasy novel.

In 1908, a massive, mysterious explosion in the Siberian forest leads a curious tavern owner to investigate. At the center of the devastation, he finds a single tree still standing—a large spruce—which the man promptly cuts down, intending to harvest its unusually strong heartwood. Back in his village, the wood attracts attention for its pleasant, spicy fragrance, and for its even stranger property: Proximity to the wood seems to make men better lovers. A section of the heartwood ends up with a Romani trader; years later, the log is smuggled out of Moscow with a family fleeing the Bolsheviks. Partially burned for fuel in Spain, it’s eventually discovered by a Sephardic luthier from Barcelona, who presents it to his son, 16-year-old Gaspar de Castillo, as practice material for the construction of his first guitar. Gaspar, who was born the same month and year as the Siberian explosion, has been trained since boyhood to play his family’s Ladino music, but he also loves American jazz. The first time Gaspar plays the guitar he makes from the wood, a bolt of blue electricity leaps from its strings. When he plays it for an audience, its amorous effects cause listeners to lose their inhibitions. As Europe descends into the Second World War, Gaspar escapes to America, where an old friend of his father’s, Walter Fischer, gives him a job repairing instruments. Gaspar begins playing for passers-by in Central Park, delighting humans and birds alike and attracting admirers both benevolent (like jazz star Charlie Parker) and otherwise (like gangster Meyer Lansky). Gaspar finally strikes up a romance with fellow immigrant Minette, a Romani flamenco dancer he has desired since his boyhood in Barcelona, but his American dream soon becomes far more complicated than he ever could have predicted.

Siegel’s folktale-like narration never gets too close to Gaspar’s or the other characters’ interior lives, giving readers the sense that a gulf of history exists between them and the people in the story. The author has a talent for crafting memorable moments and lines of dialogue that feel genuinely time-worn, as when Gaspar’s music teacher, the silver-haired maestro Gustavo Moravia, cautions the boy that “Real music comes from the silences between notes, not how many notes you play. Think of the silences when a lark sings as the sun rises.” The appearances of historical figures like Parker and Lansky makes for good fun, though Gaspar’s New York sometimes feels more like a movie set simulacrum than a real place, with people exclaiming “Fuhgeddaboudit” and offering the young immigrant egg creams. (“The vendor handed him a drink, fizzy and sweet. Why don’t I taste egg or cream? Gaspar asked himself.”) The novel doesn’t play on readers’ heartstrings quite as masterfully as Gaspar plays his guitar, but the journey is a pleasant one, capturing that indescribable magic with which music seems to shape the world around us.

A playful novel of migration, music, and the inescapable violence of history.