Cue the music: Dancer-turned-novelist Molly Terrill finds her story in her luthier father’s workshop

Molly Terrill’s introduction to the family business was a sensory experience. There were the albums that spun through a crackling record player, from classical to jazz to folk to bluegrass. There was her father’s workspace in the middle of the house in Wendell, where he leaned over a bench as wide as his arms and as high as his hips to repair violins. Under the workbench was a colorful quilted blanket, soft and inviting, where, as a toddler, she would sometimes sit for an hour in her makeshift fortress. There was the creak of her father’s chair when he shifted his weight, the whoosh of the wheels as his feet propelled him back and forth. The pungent smell of varnish. And then, most mesmerizing, as her father whittled away at that day’s work, there were the cream-colored wood shavings, fluttering to the floor like snow.

As Terrill got older, Stamell Stringed Instruments moved to Kellogg Avenue in Amherst, where it has remained for 37 years in the blue Victorian house behind the post office. In elementary school, she would stop by between school and dance class to say hello to her father, Matt Stamell, whose workshop was on the second floor, through the friendly lobby where people browsed and talked shop, and up the stairs to the luthiers’ headquarters. He knew she was as passionate about dance as he was about the violins that hung in rows and the cellos that stood at attention in the shop’s practice rooms.

Now she has funneled her father’s influence into her debut novel, “The Violin Maker,” which comes out on Oct. 13. Based on the provenance of a real cello and the war-torn pasts of two luthiers racing to identify it, it is part historical novel, part psychological thriller. There will be a release party on Oct. 15 at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley and a wine-and-cheese reading on Oct. 29 at the shop, which, naturally, will be accompanied by string music.

On a busy afternoon in September, Terrill joined her father at his workbench to talk with the Gazette about the book’s origins, which she said are inextricably intertwined with the history of the family business.

By the way, she said, people come to Stamell Stringed Instruments from New England and beyond to rent about 1,800 violins each school year. There is also a branch in Poughkeepsie, New York.

“I want this to be about Molly, not about me,” Stamell said immediately.

With some prodding, he revealed that he was “a child of the ’60s” to whom music was essential, naming Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as singular influences.

At Hobart College in New York, he attended a freshman tutorial called “Mountain Dulcimer Making,” after the teardrop-shaped, guitar-like instrument. After that, he and a friend began creating. Soon he was off to Boston University to study instrument making, and he worked alongside the same friend until they both moved to western Massachusetts and went their separate ways. He now lives in Amherst, while Terrill lives with her family in Hadley.

This is how his daughter tells it: “My dad started working with fretted instruments in the ’70s and early ’80s. He was making guitars and dulcimers, but learned, I’d say, very quickly, that the money is in violins. I’m one of four, so he was supporting four kids.”

“It was a big — oh my gosh. It was a big risk,” he admitted, softening a bit. “I’ve got four daughters and six granddaughters. And counting.” A pause. “But again, this is about the book.”

When asked how he has stayed in business all this time, he conceded with a laugh, “It’s my magnetic personality.” He said that while he’s always thinking about providing for his family, his work isn’t a job: “It’s more of a lifestyle and a kind of calling. Especially at the workshop level, there’s no end in terms of what you can learn. It feeds your soul.”

For a long time, dancing was Terrill’s soul food. As a kid she practiced West African, ballet, and modern dance and went on to major in contemporary dance with a specialization in choreography at Concordia University in Montreal. She later studied interdisciplinary arts at Goddard College in Vermont. When she returned to the area and started teaching, she worked on and off at the shop “to be immersed in the arts.”

A spine injury when Terrill was 19 eventually made it too dangerous to keep dancing. By her early 30s, when she had two daughters, she believed choreographing was behind her. Working at the shop was always fulfilling, but something was missing.

After her father started to teach her about appraising, something sparked. “To be able to look at an instrument and know pretty quickly what you’re looking at, it just strikes me,” she explained.

On the cusp of the pandemic, Stamell gave his daughter “The Violin Makers of the Guarneri Family” by William Henry Hill, and she read about the cello that would end up at the center of “The Violin Maker.” Made in 1691 by a member of the Guarneri family, she said its origins have always been disputed.

She explained that in 1951, while a New York dealer named Emil Herrmann had the cello in his possession, he wrote a certificate for it that changed the date it was created. Instead of being the work of the prolific paterfamilias Andrea Guarnari, it could have been created by his son, Pietro, whose limited known work increased the cello’s value.

In “The Violin Maker,” the real history is interwoven with the dark backstory of a fictional character named Thomas Barlow, a World War II veteran who has been charged with authenticating the cello while “his mental state is deteriorating.” The book toggles between 1690s Italy and 1950s America.

After listening intently to his daughter’s description of the book he inspired, her father admitted, “I have to say, I didn’t know Molly could write. And then when I read the book, it kind of blew me away because I was an English major. If it was crap, I would have told her. But it’s not.” (This review was particularly timely because Terrill had dedicated the book to him, which he wouldn’t learn until later.)

He smiled at his daughter, “It’s all come together for you like instrument work did for me. It combined music, craft, history and construction. It just brought a lot of different disciplines together. And I think that’s what writing has done for you.”

She nodded. “It’s like OK, this is my calling,” she said. She credits her writing group and instructors at Grub Street in Boston for a book seven years in the making, eventually picked up by indie publisher Koehler Books. Kirkus Reviews has called it “An exquisite and finely tuned historical novel deserving of an encore.”

For the lifelong dancer, it turns out that writing is akin to choreographing a story. “It’s the movement of bodies through space and time, but it’s on this mental stage instead of, you know, this physical stage,” she said. “When I’m writing scenes, I’ll pause and kind of close my eyes, and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, who’s over here? Someone’s coming in.'”

While Terrill teaches movement at Serenity Yoga & Wellness in South Hadley and through the Wellness Department at Amherst College, she has tried to separate her careers by using her full name for her established jobs and “M. Terrill” as her nom de plume. She has another book in development.

“I mean, really, what I’ve spent my whole life studying is the creative process itself, and I’ve done that in many different mediums and forms,” she continued. “So it feels very natural to me. You know, you get the idea, you bring it to fruition, you get feedback, you revise, you put it out into the world and hope people like it.”

As the two rose from the workbench for pictures, our photographer joked that he hoped they liked each other. Terrill said, “Oh, I didn’t tell you. I danced for 27 years. And my dad did not miss one performance.”

He smiled warmly. “I tried to miss it,” he joked. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t miss any of it.”

Learn more and buy the book at mterrillauthor.com. Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.