Books are burned, truth is denied, and tyranny threatens freedom. Yet Dr. Jane Foster—once a respected professor of Ethics, now exiled for refusing to conform—awakens to a hymn coming from Angel Mountain. The melody is familiar, perhaps from a chapel long ago? Is it memory? Madness? Or a call?
Jane lives alone in Villa Tilifos, Danville, in a grand house whose empty bookshelves mirror the cultural devastation outside. The Social Justice Agency raids homes without warning. Libraries smolder. The great works of Western Civilization—Socrates, Shakespeare, Austen, Tolkien—are condemned as dangerous relics of a forbidden past. Jane has hidden what she can, but she sees the bonfires increasing daily.
Haunted by the child she lost long ago, Jane clings to the ideals her father taught her: goodness, truth, beauty, and the courage to choose the good even when threatened. She summons her former students, to join a secret society modeled after the wartime Guernsey Literary Society. Together, they plot to rescue the surviving books and historical documents before they vanish forever.
In Berkeley, near the university, an aging priest hears a medieval hymn echoing through the fog. His hidden basement of sacred texts and his chapel of sacrament and prayer may preserve memory itself.
A young journalist writes about the Vienna Holocaust and a high school teacher refuses to lie about the American founding. They soon join Dr. Foster’s book club and mission.
As storms batter California and tyranny threatens, Jane confronts her past, finds faith, and decides whether the music of the mountain is a warning… or an invitation.
The Music of the Mountain is a literary, inspirational novel about conscience, courage, and our better angels—an ode to freedom and the written word, and those who keep it alive.
+ + +
Praise for The Music of the Mountain:
“Thank you, thank you. Your book cannot be read apart from wonderment and awe couched in the liminality of Love. You have told the truth… In The Music of the Mountain there are no stop gaps, only the ongoing flow of Love that leads us into a Reality beyond, in our midst. Again and again, thank you.”
Fr. Seraphim, Elder, Nazareth House Apostolate, Kentucky
“Christine Sunderland’s The Music of the Mountain is a haunting and intriguing novel about freedom, friendship, and faith—that is as much a warning as it is a harbinger of hope. Set in an alternate world burdened by 21st century government overreach, the story is a stirring reminder that truth, courage, and love can endure even in the darkest times—and Western Civilization is worth saving.”
Kimberly Begg, President, The Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women; Author, The Truth about Women
“How do four extraordinary Americans—an elderly Anglican priest, a fired UC Berkeley professor and two former students—stand up against an oppressive book-burning state to save Western Civilization? They are richly described with diverse life experiences. Gripping in places, The Music of the Mountain is a book you will be sorry to leave when finished…compelling and beautifully written.”
Michelle Easton, Chairman of the Board, The Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women
“In what is very nearly a dystopian novel, Christine Sunderland takes up the theme of hope amidst destructive trends in society. There are four people at the heart of the book. And, by contrast with an illegitimate, authoritarian, withering of justified dissent, these four are very much at the beating heart of both preserving and advancing a renewal from above…The Music of the Mountain expresses, in the likely reader’s tears, the very contrast between being open to the mystery of life and being hardened by the dictates of an impenitent hatred of what is good, true and beautiful.”
Francis Etheredge, Bioethicist and Theologian; Author, A Shorter Bioethics
Christine Sunderland
