Marcia Menter grew up in Syracuse, New York, and earned a degree in vocal performance from the Manhattan School of Music. She has held senior writing and editing positions at national magazines including Glamour, Mademoiselle, Self, Redbook, and More magazine. Her self-help book, The Office Sutras: Exercises for Your Soul at Work, was published in 2003 by Red Wheel/Weiser Press. Her poetry chapbook, The Longing Machine, was published in 2007 by HappenStance Press in Scotland. She has published poems, essays, and literary criticism in journals in the US and UK. Menter lives in Manhattan.

As an adolescent in Syracuse, New York, Marcia Menter fell in love with the recorded voice of Ann Drummond-Grant, a Scottish contralto who sang with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, the legendary Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. She dreamed of singing with the company, even though it didn’t hire Americans—and even though, as she soon found out, Ann Drummond-Grant had died years earlier. But her dream persisted, and for the young music lover, Drummie’s glorious voice remained a living presence—a refuge from the race riots and political upheavals of her school years.

Menter earned a conservatory degree in singing before finally realizing she was not a performer at heart. She spent decades searching for Ann Drummond-Grant—visiting places she lived and interviewing people who knew her—and putting together the puzzle of her life. This is the story of a singer and her listener—of two separate lives divided by time and geography but connected in unexpected ways.