Instaread - The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto: A Novel by Mitch Albom

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Mitch Alboms

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

A Novel

by

Instaread

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Table of Contents

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom is a novel about the fictional musician Frankie Presto and his amazing journey through music and life. Frankies life story is told from the perspective of music, a fictional narrator. This is fitting, given that Frankie was one of the worlds greatest guitarists.

The story, however, begins at its end: Frankie has died during a music festival. During a performance, his body levitates and then drops to the stage. The novel opens at Frankies funeral, where music-industry figuresincluding nonfictional musicians such as Lyle Lovett and Ingrid Michaelsonhave gathered to pay their respects and share their thoughts about the deceased guitarist. Music, the narrator, uses the opportunity of the funeral to reflect on Frankies life.

Frankie is born in Villareal, Spain, in August 1936, amid the violence of the Spanish Civil War. Late in her pregnancy, Frankies mother, Carmencita, goes walking along the riverbank. There she encounters a gypsy family. The father, known as El Pel, gives her a set of guitar strings that glow blue. She takes them, planning to give them to her husband, El Maestro, a musician who had been blinded in the war.

At church later that night, Carmencita doubles over in pain: her labor has begun. A young nun named Josefa comes to assist her. But before they can leave, the church is stormed by revolutionaries who are displeased with the new government, which the church supported. The women hurry upstairs to a hidden chamber where Frankie is born. His mother names him Francisco Presto. To keep him quiet while they remain hidden, she sings him the song Lgrima by Francisco Trrega, a famous guitarist from Villareal. Weak and bleeding, Carmencita asks Josefa to save and protect the child. Josefa flees with the baby, and Carmencita dies in the church, covered in the robes Josefa discards in order to escape without being identified as a nun. The guitar strings do make it to Frankie, though, and Josefa will spend the rest of her life honoring her promise to protect the child.

Josefa tries to raise Frankie herself. She eludes questions about whether Frankie is her child. At first, Frankie is completely silent. But one day, after hearing a gramophone record of Lgrima played by Spanish guitarist Andrs Segovia, Frankie bursts into tears and will not stop crying. The nun, at her wits end, wraps Frankie in a blanket and casts him into a river outside town. But instead of drowning, Frankie is rescued by a hairless dog.

The dogs owner, Baffa Rubio, also owns a sardine factory. Baffa renames the child Francesco Rubio and tells him his mother died in a car accident in Detroit. He shows Frankie a picture of his sister and lies, telling the boy the woman in the picture is his deceased wife. Baffa nurtures Frankie, and after witnessing his musical skill, he arranges guitar lessons with El Maestro. El Maestro has become a drunk, and at first does not want to teach Frankie anything. The death of his wife Carmencita left him utterly depressed, and he believes his unborn child died with her. But eventually, he takes to Frankie and teaches him everything he knows about music, cleaning up his life in the meantime. He also teaches him English. But El Maestro is blind, so he is unable to see the boys features for himself and does not suspect that Frankie is his son.

Later, in 1944, Baffa begins to have trouble with the workers at his factory. General Francisco Franco has been Spains military dictator for years. His regime censors art and imprisons dissidents. One day, Baffa sends Frankie out to play while he negotiates with the factory workers. In the woods, Frankie meets another young child, a beautiful English girl named Aurora York. Frankie falls in love almost immediately. Together, the two climb a tree and observe soldiers burying six men in an unmarked grave. After the soldiers leave, Frankie creates six flowers out of his guitar strings, and leaves them at the burial site. Aurora kisses Frankies ear as they part. When Frankie goes back to the factory, Baffa is gonearrested as part of the workers scheme to oust him from the factory.

For help, Frankie turns to El Maestro, who then visits Baffa in prison. Baffa arranges for El Maestro to get enough money to put Frankie on a ship to the United States. Before Frankie leaves, El Maestro gives him a guitar. He also gives Frankie the guitar strings the gypsy had given Carmencita. He changes Frankies surname back to Presto, still without realizing that Frankie is his son. Before Frankies departure, El Maestro makes Frankie give his first performance at a local tavern. Frankie plays songs that have been banned by the Franco regime, and the audience boos.

But El Maestros plan for Frankie is foiled. He enlists a conga player named Alberto to help him get Frankie out of the country. Alberto steals the money intended for Frankies journey and kills El Maestro. Frankie makes it onto the boat, but is discovered and forced ashore in Southampton, where he lives for more than a year. Luckily, he eventually meets the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who is headed to the United States. When Frankie agrees to go with Django, the lowest string on his guitar glows blue, something that continues to happen at pivotal moments in his life.

In the United States Frankie sets out to find his family in Detroit. He finds Baffas sister, who denies that she is Frankies mother and exposes Baffas lies. Frankie feels he has been deceived. After the police find Frankie sleeping in an alley, he misses the train on which Django and his band leave town to continue their tour. He ends up in an orphanage, where he gets into a fight with another orphan. During the fight, the guitar string that glowed blue breaks. He leaves the orphanage and is mysteriously reunited with his dog.

Frankie begins to play guitar in Detroit clubs, where he befriends the musician Marcus Belgrave. One night, Frankie sees a young blonde girl being attacked by a man at the club, but rescues her by mesmerizing the crowd with his incredibly fast guitar playing. One of his guitar strings glows blue, and he knows this girl, who has run off into the night, is Aurora.

Frankie goes looking for Aurora in Nashville, where he stays with Marcuss cousin Hampton Belgrave. Hampton takes Frankie to audition at the Grand Ole Opry, then suffers a heart attack. Frankie is able to get Hampton, who is black, into a whites-only hospital, and thereby saves his life. Another string glows blue.

Frankie then goes to New Orleans and finds Aurora there. Frankie learns that Auroras father, who had been a British spy, was killed in the war. She tells Frankie that she ran away from her horrible stepfather while on a trip to the United States. She also tells Frankie she always thought she would marry him.