The story of Distant Music -- chosen as one of the best books of 2002 by The Spectator -- begins in 1429 on Madeira, an island consumed by a fire that has blazed for seven years. A young peasant girl, Esperanca, meets Emanuel, a Jewish boy on shore from a Portuguese sailing ship. The courtship blossoms when he teaches her to read, but they know they must separate when the ship leaves. From that first meeting and parting, others flow across six centuries: each life is short and the couple faces peril, tenderness, and horror. What survives is love, the ache of longing, the awareness of something lost, the immensity of distance, and the fragility of human bonds.