A Place at Practice

Ilan Song can make a tired room listen. His son is learning to go quiet.

Aboard The Seeker, professions pass from parent to child, marriages are arranged, and every practice room has another claimant. Ilan has earned his place at the featured instrument through years of exacting work. He loves the music, the listeners it serves, and the recognition that tells him he has done well.

He wants to give his son the same future. But Corin hears possibility beneath the tune: the difficult, responsive work that lets another musicians line come alive. Under his fathers constant correction, he grows skilled at pleasing Ilan and cautious about sharing anything unfinished.

As Corin begins making music with a partner who has ambitions of his own, Ilan faces commitments his talent cannot make compatible. A coveted public offering promises work worth doing. His son has asked him for time he has already promised. Choosing one will change what remains available in the other.

Spanning thirty years aboard a ship whose voyage outlasts its people, A Place at Practice follows a family through love, pride, grief and the everyday labor of living together. Book 6 of The Seeker Inheritance is a novel of artistic ambition and inherited expectations, in which becoming useful to someone you love may mean hearing a future you did not choose.