title: The Gift of Goodbye
author: Kleven, M. Kay
description: fter growing up under the harsh glare and hand of her substance-abusing mother, eighteen-year-old Anna Louise Armstrong boards a bus that will take her from Wisteria, Kansas, to New York City to fulfill her dream of becoming a songwriter and concert pianist, playing in one of New York’s finest concert halls.
  
   As she steps off the bus in New York and into the Blue Sky Apartments, her life begins to change—from meeting her neighbor Chase Monroe the first day, to being hired at the Piano Emporium by the kind and caring Mr. Cutler, to taking piano lessons at The School of Musical Arts under the gentle guidance of Ms. Thompson, to playing duets with her best friend’s brother, Blake, who changed her world when she heard him play at his college two years earlier. Anna Louise finds herself caring for Chase, but is awed by Blake’s brilliance on the piano.
  
   Then her father emails her that her mother is dying and he needs her help. Reluctantly Anna Louise returns to Wisteria, but she soon finds herself missing the life she’s created for herself in New York City.