The Ring: A Novel - Softcover

Steel, Danielle

 
9780440173922: The Ring: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0440173922 ISBN 13: 9780440173922
Verlag: Dell, 1985

Inhaltsangabe

In Germany engulfed by war and hatred, the  beautiful wife of an influential banker fell in love  with a German author. His Jewish heritage led them  both to death. The husband who survives her lives on  to protect her memory, and their children. And the  ring he passes on to his daughter, Ariana von  Gotthard, remains a bond of love between them.  Separated from her family, and unable to escape Germany,  Ariana is finally arrested. A young Nazi officer  offers her survival and hope for the future.  Tragedy and a sudden twist of fate carries Ariana to  America, to a chilling deception, and a new life of  unfamiliar terrors. Her past seemingly lost  forever, her future uncertain, the ring she still clings  to is all she has left of her father and brother.  And in time it will become the bridge from her  past to her future.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Country, Prodigal Son, Pegasus, A Perfect Life, Power Play, Winners, First Sight, Until the End of Time, The Sins of the Mother, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s book Pretty Minnie in Paris.

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In Germany engulfed by war and hatred, the beautiful wife of an influential banker fell in love with a German author. His Jewish heritage led them both to death. The husband who survives her lives on to protect her memory, and their children. And the ring he passes on to his daughter, Ariana von Gotthard, remains a bond of love between them. Separated from her family, and unable to escape Germany, Ariana is finally arrested. A young Nazi officer offers her survival and hope for the future. Tragedy and a sudden twist of fate carries Ariana to America, to a chilling deception, and a new life of unfamiliar terrors. Her past seemingly lost forever, her future uncertain, the ring she still clings to is all she has left of her father and brother. And in time it will become the bridge from her past to her future.

Aus dem Klappentext

ngulfed by war and hatred, the beautiful wife of an influential banker fell in love with a German author. His Jewish heritage led them both to death. The husband who survives her lives on to protect her memory, and their children. And the ring he passes on to his daughter, Ariana von Gotthard, remains a bond of love between them. Separated from her family, and unable to escape Germany, Ariana is finally arrested. A young Nazi officer offers her survival and hope for the future. Tragedy and a sudden twist of fate carries Ariana to America, to a chilling deception, and a new life of unfamiliar terrors. Her past seemingly lost forever, her future uncertain, the ring she still clings to is all she has left of her father and brother. And in time it will become the bridge from her past to her future.

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Chapter One

Kassandra von Gotthard sat peacefully at the edge of the lake in the Charlottenburger park, watching the water ripple slowly away from the pebble she had just thrown.  The long, graceful fingers held another small smooth stone, poised for a moment, and then threw it aimlessly into the water once again.  It was a hot, sunny day at the end of the summer and her golden strawberry hair fell in one long, smooth wave to her shoulders, pushed away from her face on one side with a single ivory comb.  The line of the comb in the smooth golden hair was as perfect and graceful as everything else about her face.  Her eyes were enormous and almond shaped, of the same rich blue as the bank of flowers behind her in the park.  They were eyes that promised laughter, and yet they whispered something tender at the same time; eyes that would caress and tease, and then grow pensive, as though lost in some distant dream as far removed from the present as the Charlottenburger Schloss just across the lake was distant from the bustling city.  The old castle sat timelessly, watching her, as though she belonged to its era rather than her own.

Lying on the grass at the edge of the lake, Kassandra looked like a woman in a painting or a dream, her delicate hands sifting gently through the grass, looking for another small pebble to throw.  Nearby, the ducks were waddling into the water as two small children clapped their hands with glee.  Kassandra watched them, seeming to search their faces for a long moment, as they laughed and ran away.

"What were you thinking just then?" The voice at her side pulled her from her reverie, and she turned toward it with a slow smile.

"Nothing." Her smile broadened and she held out a hand toward him, her intricate, diamond-  encrusted signet ring gleaming in the sun.  But he didn't notice it.  The jewels she wore mattered nothing to him.  It was Kassandra who intrigued him, who seemed to hold the mystery of life and beauty for him.  She was a question to which he would never know an answer, a gift he would never quite possess.

They had met the previous winter, at a party to celebrate his second book, Der Kuss.  In his outspoken fashion, he had shocked all of Germany for a time, but the book had nonetheless won him still more acclaim than his first. The story had been deeply sensitive and erotic and his seat at the pinnacle of Germany's contemporary literary movement seemed assured.  He was controversial, he was modern, he was at times outrageous, and he was also very, very talented. At thirty-  three, Dolff Sterne had made it to the top.  And then he had met his dream.

Her beauty had left him breathless the night they met.  He had heard of her; everyone in Berlin knew who she was.  She seemed untouchable, unreachable, and she looked frighteningly fragile.  Dolff had felt something akin to a shaft of pain when he first saw her, wearing a silky, clinging dress of woven gold, her shimmering hair barely covered by a tiny golden cap, a sable coat draped over one arm.  But it wasn't the gold or the sable that had stunned him, it was her presence, her separateness and silence in the clamor of the room, and finally her eyes.  When she turned and smiled at him, for an instant he felt as though he might die.

"Congratulations."

"On what?" He had stared at her for an instant, struck almost dumb, feeling his thirty-  three years shrink to ten, until he noticed she was nervous, too.  She wasn't at all what he had expected.  She was elegant, but not aloof.  He suspected that she was frightened of the staring eyes, the milling crowd.  She had left early, disappearing like Cinderella as he greeted still more guests.  He had wanted to run after her, to find her, to see her again, if only for an instant, to look again into the lavender eyes.

Two weeks later they had met again.  In the park, here at Charlottenburg.  He had watched her looking up at the castle, and then smiling at the ducks.

"Do you come here often?" They had stood side by side for a quiet moment, his tall, dark good looks in striking contrast to her delicate beauty.  His hair was the color of her sable, his eyes brilliant onyx looking into hers.  She nodded and then looked up at him with that mysteriously childlike smile.

"I used to come here when I was a little girl."

"You're from Berlin?" It had seemed a stupid question, but he hadn't been sure what to say.

She laughed at him, but not unkindly.  "Yes.  And you?"

"Munchen." She nodded again, and they stood in silence for a long time.  He wondered how old she was.  Twenty-  two? Twenty-four? It was difficult to tell.  And then suddenly he heard a peal of crystal laughter as she watched three children, cavorting with their dog, elude their nurse and wind up knee deep in the water, the recalcitrant bulldog refusing to join them on the shore again.

"I did that once.  My nurse wouldn't let me come back here for a month." He smiled at her.  He could have imagined the scene.  She seemed young enough still to hike into the water, yet the sable and the diamonds she wore made it seem unlikely that she had ever been unfettered enough to chase into the water after a dog.  He could almost see it though, with a governess in starched uniform and cap berating her from the shore.  And when would that have been? 1920? 1915? It seemed light-  years away from his own pursuits at that time.  In those years he had been struggling to manage school and work at the same time, helping his parents at the bakery every morning before school and for long hours every afternoon.  How far removed that had seemed from this golden woman.

He had haunted the park at Charlottenburg after that, telling himself that he needed air and exercise after he wrote all day, but secretly he knew better. He was looking for that face, those eyes, the golden hair...and at last he found her, again at the lake.  She had seemed happy to see him when they met again.  And then it became a kind of silent understanding.  He would take walks when he finished writing, and if he timed it right, she would be there.

They became spiritual guardians of the castle, surrogate parents of the children playing near the lake.  They took a kind of possessive joy in their surroundings, telling each other stories of their childhood, and each listening to the other tell about his dreams.  She had wanted to be in the theater, much to her father's horror, but it had always been her private dream.  She understood perfectly that it would never happen, but now and then she dreamed that in her later years she would write a play.  She was always fascinated when he spoke of his writing, how he had started, what it felt like when his first book became a success.  The fame still didn't seem quite real to him, and perhaps it never would.  It had been five years since his first successful novel, seven years since he had left Munich and come to Berlin, three years since he'd bought the Bugatti, two since the beautiful old house in Charlottenburg had become his...and still none of it was quite real.  Not quite believing it all kept him youthful, and kept the look of delight and astonishment in his eyes.  Dolff Sterne was not blasÈ yet, not about life, or writing, and least of all about her.

She was...

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Verlag
Dell
Erscheinungsdatum
1985
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0440173922
ISBN 13 
9780440173922
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Dell GmbH
6997927350
DE.CustomerSupport@dell.com

Unterschweinstiege 10
Frankfurt am Main
60549
Deutschland

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