FIRST LOVE - Hardcover

Adam and Sandra are ballet dancers, friends since they were fifteen, and now lovers. Sandra is a dancer in the corps of the New York City Ballet who has just caught George Balanchine's eye. Adam is an explosively gifted new star who has defected to the rival company, the American Ballet Theatre. They are in love, passionate and ambitious, but ill-prepared to handle the demands, seductions, and expectations that are visited on them as they come within reach of their dreams.

The novel proceeds from a true premise: Since the beginning of his career, Balanchine sought to create an opulent ballet from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, but never had the means and the muse come together at the same time. In First Love, Adrienne Sharp conjures in Sandra a last muse for the ailing ballet master. Balanchine promises to make Sleeping Beauty for her, and that it will be his final and greatest ballet. But Balanchine's favor comes at a price, and Sandra is forced to decide which of her loves comes first. Should she continue her tumultuous involvement with the first boy to capture her heart and succumb to his vision of their future? Or should she accept all that Balanchine offers-the fulfillment of a dream nurtured from childhood during endless hours at the barre?

A former ballet dancer herself, Adrienne Sharp's first book was the acclaimed short-story collection White Swan, Black Swan. Sharp's debut novel features the same marvelous storytelling as it revisits the vivid and rarefied world of dancers, and the sacrifices and hard bargains they make in pursuit of beauty, grace, and consummate passion.