Ackermann

Exploring love and grief, synthetic biology, music and divinity, Ackermann is a dreamlike literary suspense for readers of Donna Tartt, Fleur Jaeggy, and Marilynne Robinson.

Sasha, a dental assistant, has fallen in love with her piano teacher, Ackermann. After seven years of lessons, she thinks she knows him well: his preference for whitefish and duck, his work as an environmental columnist, his place in the yellow chair by the fireplace while she plays. Until one day when, at the appointed time, his chair remains empty, and Ackermann is found shot dead beneath the snow. As Sasha searches for answers, she becomes entangled with a detective, an ice fisherman, an employee of a new biotech lab in the town's salt mines, a pastor at the local church, and Ackermann's final obsession with a Russian composer's unfinished work--a piece which, once performed, would bring about the end of the world and raise humanity to a new state of consciousness. Ackermann is a metaphysical mystery and a thrilling exploration of forgiveness, corruption, and the possibility of transcendence.