Margaret Whitman fell to her knees in a wet Chicago street, spilling coffee on a $4,000 charcoal Burberry coat. Unbeknownst to her, she was kneeling before the son she had given up 22 years and four months earlier. She didn’t know who had taught him to play her song either. But by the end of that Friday night both those mysteries would be wide open and the answer would lead her to a man she thought she’d lost forever in 2003.
This is the real story of what happened when the music for violin stopped. Margaret wrote 'Sparrow’s Return' at three o’clock in the morning, six months pregnant and terrified, in Practice Room 14B at Juilliard, when she was 19. She wrote it for the child that was growing inside her. For a child she knew already she could not keep. Her parents were plain about it. A baby would end her career before it began. The Whitmans had a name to defend. A dynasty of money . A world. The future they envisaged didn’t have space for a musician with a child and no husband.