About this item
There's a heavy price to pay for royalty in this compelling - and true - story of Anastasia Romanov and fellow grand duchesses of Russia, from an award-winning novelist.It's summer in 1914 and the Romanovs are aboard the Standart, the Russian royal yacht. Tsar Nicholas, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their four daughters, and the youngest child, Tsarevitch Alexei, are sailing to Romania to meet Crown Prince Carol and his parents. It seems like a fairy tale existence for the four grand duchesses, dressed in beautiful clothes, traveling from palace to palace. But it's not. Life inside the palace is far from a fairy tale. The girls' younger brother suffers from an excruciatingly painful and deadly blood disease, and their parents have chosen to shield the Russian people from the severity of the future tsar's condition.
About the Author
My first book, MISS PATCH'S LEARN-TO-SEW BOOK, published more than forty years ago, was intended to teach young girls how to knot thread, make a neat stitch, and sew simple items. The main character of my most recent book, GIRL WITH A CAMERA: MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE, PHOTOGRAPHER (A Novel) , is a far cry from the roundish, gray-haired lady with a needle in her hand and spectacles on her nose. Since the thrill of seeing that first book in print, I've written over sixty more books, non-fiction and novels (most recently, historical fiction) . In the process I've learned more about writing and a lot about history, a subject that was not my favorite when I was a young student but has become my passion--a passion I love to share with readers.
