While The Music Lasts

About the Book

They were frantic, wild years, those years before 1941 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the Bohanna family of Lake City, Ohio lived as if nothing would ever change. Bo Bohanna, former football hero at State, now owns a prosperous manufacturing business  His wife Olivia - Livvy - in her forties, faces empty years after her children's departure from home although she keeps busy with war work.  Daughter Kit, newly graduated from Northwesten University, seems restless in spite of her engagement to her long time beau, Henry Carter.  Son Eliot, a junior at the state university, cares for nothing except his music and his gorgeous girl, Lila.

As a humid August drags on, Bo announces he is about to entertain six men from foreign countries involved in the war who want to study the new techniques he has adapted to welding tanks and ships, and to buy the equipment from him. The visitors will stay at the Farm, Bo's counry place where his grandparents settled when they emigrated to America.

Among the guests are two from China, a Mr Li representing General Chiang Kai Shek and his American interpreter who happens to be the man Kit fell in love with when she was seventeen  She has never forgotten Duke Fallon, who has served in the Chinese Air Corps for five years.

  As the guests gather and Livvy makes them welcome, she is instantly attracted to Simon Kingsley, from South Africa.  He is as shaken by their encounter as she is. While she does her job as hostess to the visitors from Australia, from England and Canada, she seeks him out at every opportunity. Meanwhile Eliot and Lila have arranged a houseparty with four friends from the university who will spend the wekend at the guest house on the Farm.  The Bob Crosby jazz band is playing at the dance pavilion on the lake, a short drive away, and they plan to spend every evening listening to the music.

Bo's party for over a hundred guests is a huge success.  He has invited Bob Crosby who brings part of his band to play and socialize.  Eliot, inspired by more than one mint julep, goes to the piano after the band finishes and plays the way he's always wanted to, unaware that Jess Stacy from the Crosby band is sitting beside him.

Jess encourages him.  Eliot makes up his mind to find a job at a campus hangout instead of going into the plant as Bo expects him to do.  For Kit, the evening is a revelation: she will never feel for Henry the way she does for Duke. They plan to meet in the summerhouse after the guests leave.  But meanwhile Mr. Li has discovered that one of Bo's visiting business men is a spy. They agree to meet by the trout stream, which is close to the summerhouse where Kit is to meet Duke Fallon secretly.  When Kit and Duke would melt together, they hear a strangled cry. Small Mr. Li has killed the spy.  It becomes their job to drag the body up to the house and place him under a window to make it appear he has fallen to his death.

Bo, a wonderful host, congratulates himself on giving the party of the century and thinks he may take up one of the women's invitation to stop in tomorrow for drinks.

Livvy hopes for a chance to meet Simon Kingsley again before he must leave.  Duke promises Kit to see her before he takes off for Washington, but new orders come and he must depart at once for China.

That night, an angry caretaker sets the Farm on fire. He dies in the blaze but the house is destroyed.  Bo will never entertain there again.

Book Two

Eliot and Lila are married in the wedding of the season in Lake City on December 6th, 1941 They have taken a suite at a downtown hotel, planning to drive to Florida the next day after their swinging reception.  Champagne bottles still sit on the coffee table when Bo beats on the door and enters with word of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Bo demands that Eliot come to work in his plant where he will be saf

About the Author

Jane Hinchman lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio. After many moves with her family, she returned to live in the town where she was born. A writer for most of her life, she’s the author of several novels including To London, To London and Secrets in the Snow. Her short stories have appeared in Redbook and the Ladies Home Journal. Her daughter Hannah, a writer and illustrator, created the cover for While the Music Lasts