List of 1632 Characters (fictional) - Marla Linder

Marla Linder, born Kristen Marlena Linder, is a Grantville musician of great talent. She befriends the crippled down-timer musician Franz Scylwester in a series of connected stories that explore the influence of up-timer music and instruments upon the down-time neohistory. The stories essentially make up one long tale, beginning with "The Sound of Music" which explore the impact of up-timer musical knowledge, instruments and sheet music on down-timer culture and music.

Marla, who sings at least as well as she plays keyboard instruments, has been devastated by the Ring of Fire and had held great ambitions to attend a prestigious musical institute. In the first story, while on stage, her last name isn't even mentioned. Scylwester has similar psychic wounds from being deliberately maimed and losing his career as a crack violinist. Carrico's Franz and Marla stories explore the new world of music enabled by Grantville's musical knowledge, but are very sensitive and depict the two characters psychologically assisting each other to come to grips with the new reality and undergo healing. Along the way they discover the wonders of one another.

The two appear in the novel 1634: The Baltic War and in "Command Performance", where Franz gets demonstrates his renewed mastery, having learned to play left handed, and publicly asks Ms. Linder for her hand as partial conclusion to a high society concert hosted by Mary Simpson—the storyline in the anthology Ring of Fire II. The same concert is backdrop for the entrance of Admiral John Chandler Simpson in the aftermath of the industrial accident that begins The Baltic War.

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