Little Wonder by Sophie Keller
What a beautiful book this is, the story of the love between a mother and son. The story is set in China. Ma was supposed to leave her new baby with her mother and go off to the big city to earn money to help support the family. But she couldn't bear to leave baby River, so she brought him along and he accompanied her on her jobs as a cleaning woman. One day, he came across a piano in one of the houses she was cleaning and started to play a recognizable tune. And she realized that music might be their way to a better life. When she becomes fed up with his first piano teacher, she takes him to Beijing, so he can study with a better teacher. But at the rail station, they get separated and the rest of the story is their quest to find each other again. I loved both the mother and the son--and their unyielding faith that they would once again find each other.