Laura C. Rader

MY NEW BOOK, THE LARK

ALL FORMATS RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 23, 2026

EARLY REVIEWS:

Laura C. Rader’s The Lark follows Paul as his musical ambitions draw him deeper into America’s artistic world, and Rader handles the period with a beautiful eye for detail. The culture surrounding professional musicians gives Paul’s ambitions exactly the setting where they belong. Rader develops him into a fully fleshed-out musician whose desire to establish himself among celebrated artists is palpable in a world where one introduction could determine his future… Overall, The Lark is perfect for anyone interested in historical fiction about artists in America’s musical history. Very highly recommended.—Readers’ Favorite

Inspired by his diary, The Lark tells the true story of the man behind the music of the 1903 Broadway comic opera of The Wizard of Oz.

Decades before Dorothy’s ruby slippers graced the silver screen, twenty-three-year-old Paul Tietjens is a brilliant classical pianist with dreams of greatness and a non-refundable ticket to Europe to study with the master composers of his time. But the bank calls in the loan on his family’s Missouri farm, and Paul sacrifices his heart’s desire to save them from financial ruin.

Hoping to find a new road to success, he moves to the up-and-coming city of Chicago, where he convinces L. Frank Baum to collaborate on a comic opera of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

Paul’s aspiration to soar with the larks takes a dangerous turn when Paul falls for his best friend’s beautiful but married sister, and The Wizard of Oz demands not only his talent but his soul.

Journeying from turn-of-the-century Chicago to the streets of Manhattan, from his family’s farm to the beaches of Michigan, Paul fights to hang onto the chance of a lifetime, his integrity, and the woman he loves.

MY NEW PUBLISHING COMPANY

I now have a DBA, Doing Business As Echoes Publishing

(Inside Scoop: Paul Tietjens, a turn-of-the-century classically trained pianist, began composing by setting poetry to his own scores. One of his first compositions was to set poems to music, including Tennyson’s poem Blow, Bugle, Blow, from which Echoes Publishing gets its name.)

Echoes was tentative working title of my second novel, which is now titled The Lark. But The Lark may have a sequel and I want to call the series Echoes. I realized it was also a great name for my new self-publishing company and venture.

The Inspiration for my DBA and my logo is Tennyson’s poem, Blow, Bugle, Blow, a rumination on mortality and memory, love and loss, which seems appropriate to the genre I write, biographical historical fiction.

BLOW, BUGLE, BLOW by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.