Duet

Duet, Kitty Burns Florey's acclaimed fifth novel, is set during the Vietnam years and provides a panoramic view of the 1960s. It's the story of an aspiring singer named Anna Nolan, and the lonely misfit who's the love of her life, Will Westenberg. The novel follows Anna from her adolescence in a Catholic school in the early 1960s, when the death of a friend brings her and Will together, through her career as a cabaret singer in Boston, and finally her marriage to an idealistic lawyer in New Haven. Layered between the two parts of Anna's story is Will's, as he struggles with a haunting secret from his past, endures a loveless marriage, and desperately tries to gain custody of his son. As the years go by, Anna and Will encounter each other for brief, overwhelming episodes, each obsessed and preoccupied by the other in different ways, until the book's shattering ending. The novel is about the music, the politics, and the texture of life in the '60s, but mostly it's about the power of love to disrupt and redeem.

About the Author
Kitty Burns Florey is a veteran copyeditor and the author of nine novels and a non-fiction book, Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences.


Genre: Romance