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Country of the Heart
Russian composer Boris Nikolayev mysteriously failed to join his wife and daughter in their Paris defection. Some 20 years later, his wife is dying of cancer and his daughter with her new name and the westernized lifestyle of a New York based writer finds out that he is due to perform in the West, in Finland. Despite the danger, she decides to go to Finland in disguise to find out from her father what really happened all those years ago. The author's first novel "The Watcher" was winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
- GenresFiction
322 pages, Hardcover
First published November 12, 1987
10 people want to read
About the author
Kay Nolte Smith
35 books15 followersKay Nolte Smith (July 4, 1932 – September 25, 1993) was an American writer. She was for a time friendly with the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, who was her leading literary and philosophical influence.
Smith was born in Eveleth, Minnesota and grew up in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Smith launched her literary career after her separation from the Ayn Rand circle. Her first novel was the mystery story The Watcher. Smith's Catching Fire is set in the world of the New York theater, with an anti-trade union political stance. Mindspell centres on the conflict between science versus religion, with Nolte Smith stating this fiction was written "to challenge strongly the belief in the occult".[4] Her novel Elegy for a Soprano is a roman a clef inspired by Rand, Nathaniel Branden, and the circle around them. Elegy for a Soprano also portrays the life of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia and Norway. Two of her novels — Elegy for a Soprano and A Tale of the Wind — were nominated for Prometheus Awards in 1986 and 1992, respectively.
She published seven novels before her death from cancer at age 61.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Nol..., accessed May 25, 2012)
Smith was born in Eveleth, Minnesota and grew up in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Smith launched her literary career after her separation from the Ayn Rand circle. Her first novel was the mystery story The Watcher. Smith's Catching Fire is set in the world of the New York theater, with an anti-trade union political stance. Mindspell centres on the conflict between science versus religion, with Nolte Smith stating this fiction was written "to challenge strongly the belief in the occult".[4] Her novel Elegy for a Soprano is a roman a clef inspired by Rand, Nathaniel Branden, and the circle around them. Elegy for a Soprano also portrays the life of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia and Norway. Two of her novels — Elegy for a Soprano and A Tale of the Wind — were nominated for Prometheus Awards in 1986 and 1992, respectively.
She published seven novels before her death from cancer at age 61.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Nol..., accessed May 25, 2012)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 23, 2011
I'd name Kay Nolte Smith as a favorite author. Her books are all the more precious to me because soon after I discovered them she died of cancer, and I knew there would be no more. Recently I've been purging my book shelves, which I have to do periodically, otherwise those books breed. I took this book down, and thought it might be the time to put it in the discard pile, because this doesn't stick out in my mind the way her two historical novels do, A Tale of the Wind and Venetian Song or her story on the theme of dangers of worshiping genius, Elegy of a Soprano. Then I turned to the first page and read:
She stepped into the store and gazed around with a smile of content. Books. By the yard, the acre, the mile. Stacked in piles and packed in bursting rows, spilling out as if propelled by the energy of their words. And everywhere the smell: must and wood and aging paper and, somehow, a hint of spice. It exhilarated her to plunge into the past, as long as it wasn't her own.
She moved past the table of shiny new review copies, toward the remainders and secondhand books. The shelves were separated by such narrow aisles that she had to walk between them crablike and angle her head to read the spines, so that the long braid of her hair slid to one side.
The book store is never named, but I had to smile. For me it was such a vivid conjuration of one of the wonders of New York City, the Strand Bookstore, and that opening sucked me right in. And it wasn't long before I was feeling a renewed affection for these characters, in particular the protagonist depicted in that opening, Hedy Lucas. Hedy and her mother defected to the United States from the Soviet Union, leaving their father behind. Now, almost twenty years later, her father, a great living composer, is being allowed to travel abroad again to Finland. Hedy travels there to meet her father again and to try to learn why he never joined them in their escape.
I won't claim this is deathless literature or even at the top of the mystery genre in the tradition of a Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. But it is definitely a well-written, at times insightful, and an entertaining mystery with a twist that isn't just clever but has emotional impact--and I find I can't part with this book in the name of a freed up space after all.
She stepped into the store and gazed around with a smile of content. Books. By the yard, the acre, the mile. Stacked in piles and packed in bursting rows, spilling out as if propelled by the energy of their words. And everywhere the smell: must and wood and aging paper and, somehow, a hint of spice. It exhilarated her to plunge into the past, as long as it wasn't her own.
She moved past the table of shiny new review copies, toward the remainders and secondhand books. The shelves were separated by such narrow aisles that she had to walk between them crablike and angle her head to read the spines, so that the long braid of her hair slid to one side.
The book store is never named, but I had to smile. For me it was such a vivid conjuration of one of the wonders of New York City, the Strand Bookstore, and that opening sucked me right in. And it wasn't long before I was feeling a renewed affection for these characters, in particular the protagonist depicted in that opening, Hedy Lucas. Hedy and her mother defected to the United States from the Soviet Union, leaving their father behind. Now, almost twenty years later, her father, a great living composer, is being allowed to travel abroad again to Finland. Hedy travels there to meet her father again and to try to learn why he never joined them in their escape.
I won't claim this is deathless literature or even at the top of the mystery genre in the tradition of a Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. But it is definitely a well-written, at times insightful, and an entertaining mystery with a twist that isn't just clever but has emotional impact--and I find I can't part with this book in the name of a freed up space after all.
November 30, 2007
"The more I admire an artist, the less I want to know him." I related to this in that it applies to some of the artists I have admired.
"The country of the heart is a strange one." This made me think of missing Vermont.
And there was more I loved in this book...but I hit a key and it deleted all that I had written, which is unfortunate cause I took out all my post-its. Oh my aching neuroses.
"The country of the heart is a strange one." This made me think of missing Vermont.
And there was more I loved in this book...but I hit a key and it deleted all that I had written, which is unfortunate cause I took out all my post-its. Oh my aching neuroses.
January 4, 2019
Why was her father unable to defect to the West? Was it Soviet chains?
February 22, 2023
To my knowledge, Kay Nolte Smith cannot badly write, nor write a bad book. (I have not, however, read every one of her books. Soon, though. Soon.)
"Country of the Heart" is a powerful and, in several ways, a sad book.
Anyone who knows the personal history of Ayn Rand will be struck, and perhaps saddened and perhaps enlightened, by this novel.
It really tugged at my own heart strings because I do know Ayn Rand's personal history (thanks to several books, including especially Chris Matthew Sciabarra's biography of her), and because I knew a world-class conductor, Vakhtang Jordania, winner of, among others, the von Karajan Prize, and I knew a world-class kanonist and composer, Ara Sevanian.
Sevanian was a friend of composer Aram Khachaturian, and at least once they performed on the same stage, with Josef Stalin in the audience.
Jordania, conductor and pianist, fled communist oppression and left behind a wife and children, the opposite of the protagonists of "Country of the Heart."
Soviet indoctrination, which goes hand in hand with oppression and repression, possibly affects musicians, creative people, and other artists more than people in more mundane fields.
But that kind of state-sponsored domestic terrorism -- follow orders or off to the Gulag! -- is becoming more common here in these United States, though without the nationalism that was so much a part of Russian communism.
Subordinating individuals was a major component of Soviet communism, is a major part of Red Chinese and North Korean communism, and is sneakily becoming part of U.S. governance and societal orientation.
"Country of the Heart" is about individuals, and is well written to show that even the bureaucrats of Soviet Communism could be human, but caught up in the collectivist scheme that destroys individualism.
Yes, I heartily recommend "Country of the Heart."
"Country of the Heart" is a powerful and, in several ways, a sad book.
Anyone who knows the personal history of Ayn Rand will be struck, and perhaps saddened and perhaps enlightened, by this novel.
It really tugged at my own heart strings because I do know Ayn Rand's personal history (thanks to several books, including especially Chris Matthew Sciabarra's biography of her), and because I knew a world-class conductor, Vakhtang Jordania, winner of, among others, the von Karajan Prize, and I knew a world-class kanonist and composer, Ara Sevanian.
Sevanian was a friend of composer Aram Khachaturian, and at least once they performed on the same stage, with Josef Stalin in the audience.
Jordania, conductor and pianist, fled communist oppression and left behind a wife and children, the opposite of the protagonists of "Country of the Heart."
Soviet indoctrination, which goes hand in hand with oppression and repression, possibly affects musicians, creative people, and other artists more than people in more mundane fields.
But that kind of state-sponsored domestic terrorism -- follow orders or off to the Gulag! -- is becoming more common here in these United States, though without the nationalism that was so much a part of Russian communism.
Subordinating individuals was a major component of Soviet communism, is a major part of Red Chinese and North Korean communism, and is sneakily becoming part of U.S. governance and societal orientation.
"Country of the Heart" is about individuals, and is well written to show that even the bureaucrats of Soviet Communism could be human, but caught up in the collectivist scheme that destroys individualism.
Yes, I heartily recommend "Country of the Heart."
January 17, 2026
Smith left behind the mystery/thriller genre (this one could qualify, but only barely), in this story of a woman who had emigrated to the United States along with her mother, while her father was unable to follow them. She finally finds an opportunity to contact him, discover what happened, and offer him an avenue to escape.
I figured out the 'solution' halfway through, which left the story lacking in suspense for me; also the protagonist is supposed to in her late 30's but was written with an early 20's vibe which made her less intriguing to me. Nevertheless, an elegantly written and thoughtful novel.
Note: the edition I read is mislabeled in Goodreads as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
I figured out the 'solution' halfway through, which left the story lacking in suspense for me; also the protagonist is supposed to in her late 30's but was written with an early 20's vibe which made her less intriguing to me. Nevertheless, an elegantly written and thoughtful novel.
Note: the edition I read is mislabeled in Goodreads as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews