-->

  •  

     

    The Author

    John duVal
       

    The Story:

    Erik, a prodigy, conceived in rape, is detested and envied by his alcoholic teenage mother, Galena, from the moment he emerged from her womb when she saw his red hair and ordered her friend Marion to get rid of him. As Erik and Galena's lives move on, serious conflicts arise. Later, maturity and events cause them to try and resolve their conflicts, but the path is fraught with obstacles. Meanwhile the story follows Erik's gay coming of age, his climb to the world stage as a concert pianist and bizarre experience as a US Army Officer during the Korean war and  how it forced a career change.

    The story is eighty-nine percent fiction filled out with my personal responses, emotional and intellectual, to events and places similar to my own life experiences. It is not a memoire.
    $2.99
     Return to Home Page

     

     

    Well, it all started with a pushy opera singer, my paternal grandmother. Of course for me, her favorite grandchild, there was a piano/music lesson while I sat on her lap in front of her Steinway, every day, sometimes twice a day.

    At the moment I turned four, she pushed me onto the stage to perform Mozart's Rondo a la Turca, at the local Grange Hall. From then on, year by year she arranged for performances at more sophisticated venues and elevated my repertoir to concert stage suitability until by the time I reached ten, I played a concerto with SYU orchestra.

    Sixteen years zoomed by, the US Air Force, Korea, Japan, then the boring bio stuff i.e. University of the Pacific, classes at the Juilliard, then eighteen years teaching in Canada, teaching piano master classes at Universities throught Canada and the US; too cold in Calgary, moved to La Jolla, low bordome threashold, became a successful abstract artist, endured four strokes, no more painting, no more piano playing, and guess what I'm doing now?

    Click to Read the First Half of "A Child of Rape" for FREE
     

    $2.99