Wait for Me

Two prologues frame the novel's mysteries. A 1991 tabloid article recounts the disappearance of country-folk singer Elle Harlow, who vanished in 1973 at age 22 after her final performance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Her Studebaker and custom pink-and-white guitar were never found. A second prologue describes a meteor striking Lenora, a small town in western Pennsylvania, in late August 1991, with every witness offering a different account.

Marijohn Shaw is an 18-year-old gas station attendant who has heard a voice singing to her in the dark for as long as she can remember. She works at the remote station run by her father, Abe Shaw. The marquee proclaims it "The Last Place Elle Harlow Was Seen," a claim no one believes. Marijohn knows most of Abe's Elle Harlow relics are fakes but shields him from this truth. She was abandoned as an infant at the station with only a broken mandolin and a note reading "Call her Marijohn." Accepted to two colleges to study music, she received no scholarships, and Abe cannot afford tuition.

Her best friend, Lazarus Wright, the preacher's son and a gifted guitarist, has spent three summers making music with her at the edge of a ravine. On the eve of his departure for college, Marijohn kisses him, but he pulls away, afraid of becoming someone who leaves her. The meteor strikes while they sit in his truck bed; his camcorder, still recording, captures the impact. Lazarus shields Marijohn as trees crash and the earth quakes. Afterward, she descends into the ravine and finds a shard of pink-and-white gingham plastic matching Elle Harlow's one-of-a-kind guitar, the first tangible evidence that Elle may have crashed there.

Without Marijohn's knowledge, Lazarus gives their camcorder footage to a news station. The video goes viral, and a Nashville record company contacts him to demo songs. They want his face, not Marijohn's songwriting. Devastated, she tells him to go, recognizing that loving someone sometimes means letting them leave. She and Abe then pull a Studebaker bumper from the river, further confirming the crash.

Three days later, Elle Harlow appears on Marijohn's porch, drawn out of hiding by the broadcast showing the mandolin that once belonged to Merry, Elle's late mountain-healer mentor. Elle demands the instrument, but Marijohn refuses. When Marijohn plays Elle's own songs, Elle is overcome. They spend the night performing Wounds from a Lover on the porch, and Elle tells the story of her life.

Part II flashes back to 1964. Thirteen-year-old Elle lives on a mountain in West Virginia. Her younger brother, Reuben, dies of pneumonia despite treatment from Merry, a mute mountain healer who plays a broken mandolin she restored by hand. Grief drives Elle to follow Merry, and she discovers she can heal people through song. She apprentices with Merry for five years, but the bond shatters when Elle follows Merry to a hidden, isolated cabin where Merry secretly tends an ill sister. Merry slips on mossy stones and strikes her head, dying instantly. Elle rescues the mandolin but cannot play it because it is strung for a left-handed player.

Elle travels to Nashville to sell her music. After repeated rejections, a secretary at Weston Studios named Josie Starling befriends her and sneaks her into the recording studio. Elle's raw voice paired with Josie's classical guitar technique turns rough songs into potential hits, but the friendship fractures over class differences. Months later, Elle hears Josie's debut single: "Heal Nothing," one of Elle's own songs repackaged under Josie's name. Studio owner Arlo Weston offers Elle manufactured pop-country songs in exchange for her silence. Elle records School Girl Crush, an album she despises, but it tops charts. At a Texas festival in 1972, she abandons her manufactured persona, sings "Heal Nothing" barefoot in the rain, and vows never to perform a School Girl Crush track again.

Arlo sends Elle to write in a cabin in Lenora's woods belonging to his cousin, a reclusive luthier who builds and repairs stringed instruments. She knows him only as Weston. Over six weeks they fall in love, and Elle writes prolifically. One morning she wakes to find Weston gone; he has taken Merry's mandolin. Elle records Wounds from a Lover, which becomes the bestselling female folk record of all time. Invited to perform at the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, for a celebration of Josie's music, Elle discovers that the luthier she loved is "Luke," Josie's famed soldier whose military service was fabricated. Elle performs a devastating "Heal Nothing," punches Josie onstage, and flees.

On December 15, 1973, Elle stops at Abe's gas station and signs the pump but is too disoriented to include her trademark heart. She discovers a baby in her back seat, Josie's unwanted newborn, placed there by Arlo. Terrified, she leaves the infant by the pump and drives on, crashing into the river. She saves herself, takes a bus home to her mother, Susannah, and lives quietly on her mountain for 18 years.

Part III returns to 1991. Elle pushes Marijohn to perform and suspects Marijohn's parentage based on her resemblance to Josie's dead twin, Jaclyn. Elle travels to Nashville, where Arlo refuses to let her record. Josie offers a choice: contact her daughter or receive a document returning the music rights, but not both. Elle chooses the daughter, obtains Marijohn's birth certificate, and tells Marijohn her mother is Josie Starling.

Lazarus returns to Lenora, and he and Marijohn drive to Nashville. Marijohn visits Josie at the decaying Starling mansion; Josie says Marijohn looks like Jaclyn but cannot face motherhood, and when Marijohn asks whether Josie ever sang to her, Josie says no and retreats. Back in Lenora, Elle and Marijohn rehearse the Merry album for two weeks. Marijohn writes a new song, "Hear Me Out," for her mother. Elle places ads announcing a concert on December 15, 1991, on Arlo's lawn, without permission.

At the concert, Elle and Marijohn perform the full album as a duet. For the encore, Marijohn sings "Hear Me Out" solo while Josie watches unseen from the edge of the property. Afterward, Elle reunites with Weston at his cabin. He reveals he took the mandolin to restore it, not to steal it, and searched for her on her mountain for years, only to be turned away by her community. They reconcile.

Elle vanishes a second time, her truck found abandoned by a river. Three months later, the Opry celebrates her full body of work as an apology for the 1973 event. The live Merry recording becomes an instant success, and producers begin calling Marijohn. Lazarus, having canceled his record deal to study accounting, takes Marijohn to the ravine and shows her a piece of the meteor buried in the thawing hillside. They agree to leave it where it lies.

Marijohn prepares to leave Lenora for Nashville to record her own music. She rows to the old cabin one final time and finds it swept clean except for the gingham shard she once gave Elle, resting on the table with a note in Elle's hand: "I'm coming back." Marijohn writes a final song about the meteor, recognizing that the sound she heard the night it struck was not just the impact of a rock from space but the sound of herself breaking through.