The Changing of Keys, a debut novel from alumna Carolyn Jack ’16, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in 2024.
In 2016, the first chapter of The Changing of Keys, previously titled Success, was awarded the Meringoff Prize for Fiction by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers (ALSCW). The award included a $2,000 cash prize and publication in Literary Matters. The judges (John Burt and Lee Oser) described the work as “a brilliant portrait of a talented, observant, tart-tongued, young pianist from a Caribbean island whose cultivated, nearly deaf mother has determined that he will be a prodigy, and who is just at the point of leaving home to pursue study in the United States.”
Upon arriving in the United States, the previously isolated and bitter narrator of The Changing of Keys finds rising stardom through his spectacular musical talent. But both his fame and his intense, complicated marriage are soon in danger of being derailed by the arrival of an unwanted child. The narrator is forced to grapple with his own complicated relationship to love in his attempt to become a better parent for his child.
In the award-winning first chapter, Jack’s narrator is shocked when, after his piano recital, his mother announces to the crowded room that she has arranged for him to study music in Chicago. He stands frozen in the face of her authority.
“I don’t believe I had ever talked to Mother,” the narrator states, “just shouted and listened and watched. It was all she had ever seemed to allow.”
“After so many years of work on this book, I’m excited and grateful that Regal House has chosen to publish it,” Jack said. “I feel as if I’m living proof that 'Don’t ever give up’ is great advice.”
Carolyn Jack is an author and scriptwriter. Her story, "Fugue and Intermezzo," won an honorable mention in the 90th Annual (2021) Writer's Digest Writing Competition. Her stories have appeared in The Westchester Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and Pen + Brush in Ink. She was the winner of The Westchester Review's 2016 Flash Fiction Contest. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her film, Wall of Fame, opened the 2009 Ohio Independent Film Festival and her stage scripts have been presented in workshop by Cleveland Public Theatre and Florida Repertory Theatre. Her reporting has appeared in Critical Read.
