At a family picnic, 16-year-old Aksel's wild, beautiful mother is drowned on a drunken swim. His family sinks into isolation and bereavement, but gradually the talented young pianist determines to dedicate his life to his mother's memory by playing the music she loved.
The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is much in the news, what with the daring theft of his most famous painting The Scream from the Munch Museum last month. Arcadia published the trade paper edition of this book in 2001 - to excellent reviews. It now appears in a new B format edition to coincide with a major Munch retrospective - and following the massive worldwide publicity surrounding the Munch .