The Maestro Letters

About the Book

Ten years after the American Civil War, Celeste Sinclair, now living in London with her second husband, receives a letter from her former mother-in-law, Helen Tremble, now living in Baltimore. Formerly Mrs Tremble was Mrs. James Dearborn the wife a Southern planter. She is writing from the Metropolitan Hotel in New York to report that she has rediscovered the Maestro. Big news. The Maestro, we gather, is a Gypsy violinist whom both Helen and Celeste knew before the war. The Maestro, it seems, had been important to both of them for reasons not immediately clear. Knowing, at last, how the Maestro may be contacted, Celeste writes to the him, catching him up on her own life during the war and after. She asks him he if he would consider writing to her son Aaron in order to tell the young man something about his real father, the late Carl Dearborn who had been the Maestro’s best (perhaps only) friend among the Gajo or non-Gypsies. The Maestro, in his reply, explains that committing words to paper does not come naturally to the Rom (Gypsies), but he will do it for her sake and for that of her son who bears his name, Aaron. The Maestro then embarks upon a series of letters to his namesake in which he undertakes to tell the young man how his mother and father were brought together in the South’s last antebellum years. At the same time he tells his own story, that of a Gypsy musician caught in a struggle to free his family held prisoner on trumped up charges by a sheriff who does not like their race. As non-white persons unfamiliar with Southern mores, the Gypsies tend to THE MAESTRO LETTERS – A Longer Introduction PAGE 2. give offence simply by failing to conceal their intelligence. In his first letter, the Maestro begins the young man a bit about himself. He writes of his Gypsy boyhood in England and of his experience as London busker or street musician. He also tells how he and his extended family followed his grandfather to America. Upon his grandfather’s death he inherited the old man’s treasured violin and the leadership of the family. He leads his people on a westward expedition which they hope will take them to California. They move slowly, stopping their wagons at market towns along the way. While rolling along beside the Ohio River, they are seduced by the apparent ease of rafting. They sell their horses, build rafts, and load their wagons onto them--thus providing themselves with shelter and comfort. Life and travel on the water proves much to their liking. When the Ohio empties them into the Mississippi they allow this greater river to carry them into the south. Life remains easy, but as they penetrate deeper and deeper in into slave territory, they encounter a new kind of hostility from the citizenry. The Gypsies do not understand how dark skinned people are expected to behave in presence of whites. Several narrow escapes, however, do not persuade them to abandon life on the River. They expect to find safety in cosmopolitan New Orleans, but they never reach that queen of cities. Near the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, they make camp in a wild and wooded spot which, unknown to them, is an undeveloped corner of the Grey Oaks Plantation owned by Colonel of Militia James Dearborn. For five days the Gypsies remain upon their campsite unmolested. Each day they walk to THE MAESTRO LETTERS – A Longer Introduction PAGE 3. Vicksburg in order to ply such trades as door-to-door jewelry selling, tinkering, and fortune telling. The Maestro plays his violin on the boat-landing where he attracts large crowds willing to toss coins into his hat to keep him playing. On the fifth day Colonel Dearborn, his wife, and son stop in their carriage to hear him play. The Maestro remembers them because the son, Carl, tips him in gold. That same evening Sheriff Josh Lymann and a party of armed deputies pay a call upon the Gypsy camp. They inform the Maestro that he and his people are under arrest

About the Author

Author Daniel Bruce now lives in Northern California with his wife, fellow author G.R. Griffis. The Maestro Letters, his third published novel, appears after a career as a public librarian. Before earning his masters degree in Librarianship, he earned a masters in Theatre Arts at UCLA and spent his early years as a New York actor. The Maestro Letters reflects his deep interest in American History. His other novels are The Mote in Saturn’s Eye, and The Life and Times of Buck Hooey.