Adam, now a rising rock star, and Mia, a successful cellist studying at Juilliard, are reunited in New York City and reconnect for the first time since Mia's near-fatal car accident three years earlier drove them apart.

Tripp, who plays guitar only for himself, and Lyla, a cellist whose talent has already made her famous but not happy, form an unlikely friendship when they are forced to share a practice room at their high school.

An adaptation of the folk rhyme "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly", featuring musical instruments.

Acclaimed best-selling author Mark Salzman delivers a humorously poignant tale in this novel of disappointment and redemption. Renne Sundheimer's life is a shadow of his youth, when he was a celebrated genius cellist. Now a college professor, he struggles to regain his gift. But in one week he is drafted into jury duty and reluctantly agrees to tutor a young Korean boy, forcing Renne to come to terms with his limitations and broaden his horizons....

In a cluttered room in an abandoned coat factory in lower Manhattan, the Late Starters Orchestra comes together each week to make music. All have come late to music or come back to it after a long absence. In this bona fide amateur string orchestra, Goldman pursues his lifelong dream of playing the cello. Goldman takes us along to LSO rehearsals and his son's Suzuki lessons; he explores history's greatest cellists and attempts to understand what motivates...