Strum is a multigenerational tale of a family of artists, musicians and instrument makers, whose stories of love, passion and musical genius cross three continents and a century of wars and cultural divides.
The story begins with a native Iroquois boy in 1950 Quebec, who is orphaned when his father is killed in a bloody mill accident before his eyes. Bernard is five years old and the trauma renders him deaf and dumb. One day, many years later, the spirits of his great-great-grandparents come to him with the gift of music and lead him to an 800 year old cedar which unexpectedly topples at his feet.
Now a wood artist, Bernard creates two guitars from the tree where Walk Tall and Isabelle had fallen in love 100 years before. Imbued with the spirits of these two lovers, the story follows the two guitars, plus the original baroque gitarre created by Isabelle's mother, around the world from a 19th century convent in the French alps, to the Himalayas, and finally to the jungles of Laos, where a napalm bomb nearly ends the family's legacy of music and passion.
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