Us Conductors is the imagined story of Lev Sergeyvich Termen, inventor
of the theremin--one of the first electric musical instruments--and his
unrequited love for Clara Rockmore, its greatest player. A tale of
espionage and electricity, it takes listeners from the gardens of St.
Petersburg to the Jazz Age nightclubs of New York, through concert
halls, speakeasies, and the Siberian wastes.
Sean Michaels' debut novel is based on the true events of Termen's life:
his invention of the theremin in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik
Revolution; his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and secret spy, jostling
with Gershwin and building weapon detectors for Alcatraz; and his
eventual return to Stalin's USSR.
As the novel reaches its devastating climax, Termen is sent out into the
gulag--first to a forced labor camp and then to a prison for
scientists--and bears witness to some of the Cold War's deepest
atrocities. But like the theremin, Us Conductors is also an eerie and
magical invention. Subtle, thrilling, and melancholy, it is a story of
secrets, of human ingenuity, of the lengths one goes to survive, and
ultimately of the undiminishing hope for love that keeps us alive.
