Susan Moore Jordan

In the nineteen fifties, ELI LEVIN, a brilliant teenage pianist born with a serious heart defect and not expected to live past the age of thirty, meets KRISSY PORTER on a visit to a small town in the Southeast. They play piano duets, talk about baseball, eat banana splits. A budding romance is ended by interference from Eli’s family, but they find their way back to each other three years later.
They marry on Krissy’s twentieth birthday while they are both college students. The music they share is a vital part of their life together. Once he begins his career, Eli’s rise in the music world is meteoric.
Although they are devoted and intensely passionate from the beginning, the couple must struggle with never knowing when the various repairs to Eli’s heart might give out.