Nothing’s better than finding a new-to-me author who writes characters I can feel like music pulsing through my veins. Mel Bossa’s “Music of the Knight” took me through scales of angst, broke emotional glass with its high notes, then left me with a sense of modulated beauty.

Micah runs a struggling non-profit, Good Ear, which teaches its volunteers to listen to elderly patients’ life tales. When his one employee, Lou Knight, introduces him to her musical relatives, he discovers a love and support he never experienced among his own critical family. Here’s what he thinks of his mother, “I didn’t know what to do with that compliment, so I stuffed it under all of her disguised insults or criticism.”

But the Knight’s intense warmth comes from caring for Lei, their obviously depressed, enigmatic son, who somehow remains still gorgeous and charismatic.
Lei, who rarely speaks, may be straight, but never-the-less seems to relax in Micah’s presence. This is Micah’s drug; he loves to support those in need. He compensates for his family’s judgment of him by offering empathy. Except, like all drugs, Lei’s need draws Micah in until Micah is over-invested and frustrated. Only after he has shown his own human frailties does Lei reveal the depth of his ravages.

With the “Phantom of the Opera” as this tale’s backdrop, readers wonder if Lei will survive, or if naive Micah is at risk. Will Micah remain co-dependent, or can he find a voice of his own? His best friend tells him, “‘You know how you get, Micah. You’re a giver. You go all in. And it’s beautiful. But this time, the stakes are high. Higher than they’ve ever been.’”

This haunting melody of grief gone awry quickly drew me in, hungering to understand what Lei suffered and how he remains beguiling. Readers see Micah’s well-intended innocence and know it must collide with Lei’s unfettered anguish. We suffer alongside the men’s gentle early interactions, awaiting their conflict. And yet, with every refrain, we cannot help but admire their tragic love, a love shown less through plot than through a dance of intimacy.

Bossa can turn a phrase, like Micah’s thoughts as he goes home one evening. “It was hard to leave him, this beautiful broken man, with only the night to hold him.” And when Micah finally understands the depths of Lei’s horrors, Micah reflects, “I was a man adrift on a hazy sea, cutting through the vapors of a world I didn’t know.”

But what sold me most on “Music of the Knight” is its reflective nature. Before he can be of use to Lei, Micah must find the strength to mature himself. Only through Micah’s growth can Lei see his own road to redemption. Isn’t this often true? Watching others handle difficulties is our best motivator.