Connie Hampton Connally
I am a writer who loves good music and good stories.
It’s been my privilege to combine these loves by writing fiction that honors the creation of beauty, even in the bleakest of circumstances, through the creation of music.
About
Connie
Connie Hampton Connally has loved music and the written word all her life, and many of her adult years she’s spent working in those fields as well. She holds a BA in English from the University of Washington and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. She’s published magazine stories and newspaper articles, worked as an editor, taught high school English and elementary music, and is currently a respected presenter at writing conferences. Through teaching music Connie discovered the work of Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, who uplifted his nation through decades of war, political oppression and social upheaval. Connie couldn’t resist this theme of creating beauty amidst hardship. She wrote her novels Fire Music and The Songs We Hide as a result. Connie is currently writing a third novel, set in Peru.
Connie and her husband live in Tacoma, Washington. They travel frequently, since they have family members living abroad. Because of her family and her characters, Connie has set her heart—and often her feet—in faraway places.
Books
Fire Music
Antal Varga, a Budapest violinist, is 78 years old when a young American stranger places a yellowed music sheet into his hands. With shock he recognizes his own teenage handwriting, for he himself wrote this piece in 1945, when his city was under siege. Desperate to talk with this American woman, Varga enlists his grandson Kristóf to translate; and he finds that the woman, Lisa, shares his family’s painful heritage.
Now his grandson and this young American press him for the story behind the music, and especially behind its shattered ending. For decades he’s hidden this story of war, love, jealousy, and loss. Can he bear to tell it now? Can they bear to hear it?
Cautiously Varga, Kristóf and Lisa open the music and its hard secrets, hoping that although pain has extended over generations, perhaps love will extend further still.
To order the book:
The Songs We Hide
Published by Coffeetown Press
In 1951, a grim hush has settled over Hungary. After a lost war and a brutal transition to communism, the people live under constant threat of blacklisting, property confiscation, arrest, imprisonment and worse. In this milieu of dread, the best land of Peter Benedek’s peasant family is seized and his life upended. Moving to Budapest for a manual labor job, Peter meets Katalin Varga, an unwed mother whose baby’s father has vanished, most likely at the hands of the secret police. Both Péter and Katalin keep their heads down and their mouths clamped shut, because silence is the only safety they know.
But the two have something in common besides fear: they are singers. When Katalin starts giving Péter voice lessons, they take an intrepid step out of hiding by making music together. Little by little they tell each other what they cannot tell others. In their bond of trust, they find relief and unexpected happiness.
Yet the hurts and threats in their lives remain, waiting. As harsh reality assaults them again, is hope even possible? Facing their hardest trials yet, Peter and Katalin learn to carve dignity and beauty out of pain.
To order the book:
Events
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Recent Blog Posts
Desperate Bulgaria: Gleanings from Miroslav Penkov’s East of the West
Recently I read East of the West: A Country in Stories by Miraslav Penkov. The book is a collection of short stories about Bulgaria.
Going Global–in a Quechua Village Outside Abancay, Peru
Rory and I recently spent a week and a half in the Andes of Peru with our middle son and his wife. Brendan and Erin live as missionaries in Abancay, a small city in the province of Apurimac. This is one of the poorest regions of Peru, and it’s a stunningly beautiful mix of sweeping mountains, terraced subsistence farms, adobe huts and impossible roads.
My daughter-in-law, Erin, is a dentist. Brendan by training is a linguist and an educator, and he helps a group of Peruvian Christians produce Quechua-language teaching materials aimed at strengthening the literacy and the spiritual growth of the people in the area. Brendan and Erin frequently travel to small mountain villages in the region to offer dental services and spiritual encouragement to the people. (See their website at http://www.theconnallys.com )
During our visit to Peru, Rory and I went on one of these mountain trips with them. We rose early in the morning, loaded up the 4-wheel-drive truck, picked up a young dental hygienist from Seattle who is assisting in Apurimac for six months, and bounced over crazy roads to the tiny village of Matará. Along the way we met up with the pastor and a few hermanos and hermanas (brothers and sisters, as the Peruvian Christians call each other) from a congregation in a neighboring village. (Please understand that when I say neighboring village I mean the little pueblo you may be able to get to via a narrow dirt-and-rock road if it hasn’t rained lately; and by pastor I mean the good-hearted man, usually untrained and unpaid, who takes on the care of a congregation in addition to all his other work.) These people had previously begun going weekly to Matará in hopes of planting a church there and were excited about being part of this day of outreach.
An Act of the Soul: Thoughts after attending The Glen Workshop
This blog post is sympathetically dedicated to all artists, especially writers, who have ever wondered if they are wasting their time.
Contact
Whether you’d like to schedule an event, share thoughts, or ask questions, I’d love to hear from you. Please contact me using this form.
