My first novel, To Love A Stranger, was written, edited, and re-written over a period of ten years. During this time, my career shifted from focusing on music to writing and teaching fiction professionally. The novel draws on my own experiences of the backstage world of classical music; I wanted both to translate the "heard" experience of music to the page, and to engage with issues of social and societal justice relevant to that community and the wider world.
Praise for To Love A Stranger:
"How well do we know the people we love? This question is at the heart of Kris Faatz's beautifully written first novel. With Sam and Jeannette, Faatz has created two sympathetic, deeply flawed characters, driven by loneliness and a desire to belong. Set in the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, their story unfolds with tragic inevitability. Compassionate and emotionally engaging, To Love A Stranger is a page-turner, a story that will resonate with the reader for a long time to come." - Geeta Kothari, author of I Brake For Moose and Other Stories
"Readers are safe in this author's thoughtful hands, amidst these gorgeous words, in this world rich with the heady sounds of darkness, honesty, forgiveness. To Love A Stranger is written with the harmony of humanity in mind. To Love A Stranger is a song." - Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Whiskey and Ribbons
"Artfully plotted, elegant and sharply observed, the book has the effect of holding you in proximity to two deeply flawed characters as they advance grudgingly and by degrees toward acceptance of who they are and where they come from. The novel has the grace to allow its characters to come to terms with what they're trying to escape, and it accomplishes this without sentimentality." - Tom Andes, interviewer, JMWW Magazine