FLY, MY DARLING

A memoir of mid-life love and the ordeal of terminal cancer.

Richter, a writer, poet, and classically-trained pianist, here recounts the arc of the life-altering love affair she began in middle age that was cut short by cancer. In short, delicate passages (frequently referencing music terminology), the author recounts her traditional Italian, Catholic upbringing (her grandparents’ relocation to the United States was supposed to be temporary, but they stayed). Richter married an ambitious German businessman (often offstage in the narrative, and, apparently, in the relationship) whose schemes frequently uprooted the author and their two children. Financially, the family lacked for nothing, but emotions were another matter (“‘You never are satisfied,’ he tells me. ‘You can have ninety percent of what you want, and still focus on that missing ten percent.’”) Richter found an escape in music lessons with Lynda Roth, a prominent California performer and composer. Roth was Jewish, emotionally open, and an out lesbian. The author and Roth fell for each other, and Richter dismantled her decades-long marriage for a fresh life with Roth—who, just a few years later, would be diagnosed with lung cancer, the disease that also claimed the author’s mother. Richter and a close circle of friends nursed Roth through her final days. The author eschews autobiographical conventions—there are few name-drops of musical cohorts or cultural touchpoints (the Barack Obama presidential election receives scant acknowledgment); this is a remembrance shorn of unnecessary baggage or repetition, reduced to brief scenes and lyrical impressions. And, of course, music: “Be here now, a piano instructor wrote long ago on a Bach suite, his letters upright, bold. It was a command, not a suggestion: Be present, or give it up.”) What remains is a moving tribute to an unconventional person and the love she shared with the author.

A graceful and spare memoir of personal transformation and loss.