# Read the first page of The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom

Read the opening of The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom free, no signup. A Spanish war orphan's guitar gift changes lives across the world.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-magic-strings-of-frankie-presto-mitch-albom
- Genre: Literary fiction
- Year: 2015
- ISBN: 9780062294425
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780062294425&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780062294425
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780062294425

## The opening

I have come to claim my prize.

He is there, inside the coffin. In truth, he is mine already. But a good musician holds respectfully until the final notes are played. This man's melody is finished, but his mourners have come a great distance to add a few stanzas. A coda, of sorts.

Let us listen.

Heaven can wait.

Do I frighten you? I shouldn't. I am not death. A grim reaper in a hood, reeking of decay? As your young people say—please.

Nor am I the Great Judge whom you all fear at the end. Who am I to judge a life? I have been with the bad and the good. I hold no verdict on the wrongs this man committed. Nor do I measure his virtues.

I do know a great deal about him: the spells he wove with his guitar, the crowds he enthralled with that deep, breathy voice.

The lives he changed with his six blue strings.

I could share all this.

Or I could rest.

I always make time to rest.

Do you think me coy? I am at times. I am also sweet and calming and dissonant and angry and difficult and simple, as soothing as poured sand, as piercing as a pinprick.

I am Music. And I am here for the soul of Frankie Presto.

Not all of it. Just the rather large part he took from me when he came into this world. However well used, I am a loan, not a possession. You give me back upon departure.

I will gather up Frankie’s talent to spread on newborn souls. And I will do the same with yours one day. There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum.

All humans are musical.

Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

Of course, some of you get more of me than others. Bach, Mozart, Jobim, Louis Armstrong, Eric Clapton, Philip Glass, Prince—to name but a few of your time. In each of their cases, I felt their tiny hands at birth, reaching out, grabbing me. I will share a secret: this is how talents are bestowed. Before newborns open their eyes, we circle them, appearing as brilliant colors, and when they clench their tiny hands for the first time, they are actually grabbing the colors they find most appealing. Those talents are with them for life. The lucky ones (well, in my opinion, the lucky ones) choose me. Music. From that point on, I live inside your every hum and whistle, every pluck of a string or plink of a piano key.

I cannot keep you alive. I lack such power.

But I infuse you.

And yes, I infused the man in the coffin, my mysterious and misunderstood Frankie Presto, whose recent death during a festival concert was witnessed by a sold-out crowd, his body lifting to the rafters before dropping to the stage, a lifeless shell.

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