The Song of the Lark

Recommended by Carol Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music

Thea Kronborg, the book’s heroine, was born at the turn of the 20th century and became an opera star. On the other hand, I hardly dare pick up the mic for a night of karaoke. Rather, as an adolescent in a northern Minnesota mining town — thoroughly a man’s world at the time — I was mesmerized by a female author writing of female artistic creativity, by a book that genders professional success as female. Thea is defined by what she has achieved rather than her love interests. Equally compelling to my younger self was Thea’s journey from Scandinavian roots in a frontier outpost to the startling stimulations of a major city.