I took a walk with my friend Kelly Powers the other day, and as usual, we talked about books: what we've read lately, what we recommend, what we've thrown across the room. This time, we discussed the act of reading itself, and what a welcome refuge it can be. In that sense, all engrossing reading is "escapist," and hurray for that. Coincidentally, I had just finished "Let the Great World Spin," which won the 2009 National Book Award for fiction, and had even typed up the quote below, in which a character from my escapist novel describes her own great refuge: opera.

Colum McCann's beautiful novel takes us into the worlds of several vastly different people in 1974 New York. One of them is Gloria, who lives in a God-awful housing project in the South Bronx (across from where several other female characters ply their trade), mourning the loss of her three sons, in Vietnam. It eased my heart, toward the end, to read how she had found respite over the years from such stress and pain. She doesn't need an orchestra seat, or even to be in the opera house, she tells us--all she needs is the balm of a resplendent voice:

"Everything falls into the hands of music eventually. The only thing that ever rescued me was listening to a big voice. There are years accumulated in a sound. I took to listening on the radio every Sunday and spent whatever extra grief money the government gave me on tickets to the Metropolitan. I felt like I had a room full of voices. The music pouring out over the Bronx. I sometimes turned the stereo so loud the neighbors complained. I bought earphones. Huge ones that covered half my head. I wouldn't even look at myself in the mirror. But there was a medicine in it."

When I read this, I thought of an evening 30 years ago, in the week after my mother died. I learned about music--how to identify the various instruments and listen to what is going on among them--from my father, who still has the stereo system he built himself and all his beloved albums. The house was filled with people that week, and one night, when one of his friends arrived, my father had a favorite piece of music on—I’m thinking Liszt. As the man approached, with that trepidatious expression people have when preparing to speak to someone who’s grieving, my dad held up his hand. “I really love this part,” he said.

What a blessing, to lose yourself in music that way. As Gloria says, there is a medicine in it. And years accumulated in a sound.

Click here to hear Patricia Racette sing "Un bel di," from San Francisco Opera's "Madama Butterfly"

Photograph courtesy of Random House