Fiddler Chic
By Joann Cierniak
$25, available on Amazon

Holly Langer is a talented violinist from Duluth, living in Chicago and performing for the orchestra. Her parents, who live by the shore on London Road, pay a visit and her father, a judge, has an arterial blockage that requires surgery. 

His cardiologist is Juan Carlos Smith, born in the Bahamas. Dr. Smith also happens to be a fan of classical music. When he meets Holly in her father’s hospital room, he recognizes her from the orchestra and invites her out on a date. 

Being shy, he frets as to whether she will have any interest in someone who listens to music but doesn’t play. But effortlessly they hit it off and, in a matter of weeks, move in together. Their first impressions turn out correct and – well, it’s not really a spoiler to reveal they live happily ever after. 

Sounds like the most boring Hallmark movie ever, but plot isn’t the point. Here’s a romance deliberately free of drama, suspense, intrigue or whacky comedy. You don’t read it for thrills or catharsis. You just enter this world and stay for the pleasant atmosphere. Remarkably, it works, clearing all the bad thoughts out of your head.

This being a polite romance novel, sex is only alluded to. Their racial difference – she’s white, he’s of mixed race with “café au lait complexion” – is occasionally brought up as a potential source of discrimination, but amounts to no big issue. The same goes for their age; she’s 35, he’s 43, but they don’t mind.

Nor do they have much in the way of personal demons. Her big childhood trauma was a fight with her mother over whether she could waterski. He’s not so privileged: his mother died in a car accident when he was a child and his father, who worked on cruise ships, stuck him in an orphanage. Not a bad orphanage, though, and as a teenager he got a scholarship to attend school in Minnesota. (That’s the second thing they bond on, besides classical music, that they’re both Minnesotans in Chicago.) 

His only hangup is a feeling of rejection. When he meets his father again during a trip to Nassau, will they have a beautiful reconciliation? Not hard to guess.

Complications do arise. Her agent lands her chamber trio a European tour which could lead to her becoming an international star. She’s reluctant because it’ll take her away from her newfound love, if only for a summer, but it could lead to longer times apart and spoil the relationship. 

She doesn’t even tell him about the opportunity because he’ll feel bad about holding her back. Will she choose a man over her career? Will keeping a secret from him create a bigger problem? It all works out in a few chapters.

Some harsher realities intrude on their bliss but they take it in stride, act like the grownups they are and breeze through with nary a bump. Mostly it’s about them going to concerts, parties and get-togethers with friends, her giving music lessons and him working with patients. The story tours the arts and medical professions and the author draws upon her extensive knowledge of both. 

The only villain is a hip young events director who reacts with indifference as one of Holly’s musician partners explains that a “piano technician,” not a “piano tuner,” is needed to repair a squeaky pedal.

Much of the exposition is explained through conversation, with people talking in monologues that go on for chapters. It’s a device that feels awkward and archaic at first, with lines like, “I’d trudge up the stairway to the carved double doors and enter another world.” But you get used to it as a necessary artifice.

You can read the book slowly to pick up on the nuances. You won’t be in a rush to find out what happens next. It’s on the long side (426 pages) but that’s just as well. You don’t want it to end.