In 1990s Los Angeles, composer and professor Simon Grafton uncovers a lost manuscript that suggests previously unknown links between modernist rival composers he idolizes, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. It's a find that could make Simon's career—if his obsession with decoding the document doesn't destroy him and his family first. Interwoven into the story is the sometimes-tortured friendship between Schoenberg and Stravinsky as it unfolds in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, through the war years, and then in Los Angeles during Hollywood's Golden Era when modern music's dissonant experiments first outraged the public prior to entering the mainstream, even to the point of being co-opted by Hollywood. Music is at the heart of the novel, as well as the ways we try to break free of convention and hold on to the people we love.