Christian Kehler must leave his Rhineland boyhood behind when his parents and their friends accept the invitation of Russian empress Catherine to come live in her country. On Catherine’s four-mast sailing ship he discovers the captain’s plot against the travelers and helps the Rhineland men in a mutiny to take over the ship. To his astonishment he ends up meeting empress Catherine and pleading the case of his new friend, Tashiana, who the captain had intended to sell into bondage.
While Christian is facing his new challenges - a Russian blacksmith, a band of Gypsies and the forbidden girl he can’t quite sweep out of his heart - Catherine is facing hers. She suspects deceit in her lover of ten years, Count Grigorii Orlov; an Italian princess plots to overthrow her; her senate fights every plan she tries to implement to drag her barbarian country out of the dark ages. Just as she thinks she is succeeding a Cossack rises with a massive renegade army headed toward the travelers’ new colonies where Christian and the Rhinelanders are caught up in the rebel war before the army presses on in its mission to invade Moscow and place the empress in a nunnery.
Through the long years of Grigorii’s abuses, betrayals and humiliations, she is a woman—tender, fragile, giving and forgiving. But as she turns on the rebels and her own serfs, the great Catherine unleashes a different side of herself: unforgiving, chillingly cruel, relentless in her fierce power,
A page-turner that readers will remember long after the final paragraph.Genealogy research led me to Russia, the Europeans who answered the invitation of the new empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, and to Catherine herself. Years of research re the German Rhinelanders and Catherine's life story including the coup which overthrew her mentally deficient husband. All of this culminated in the birth of Destinies, a novel - an historical blend of fact and fiction.
Review on Barnes & Noble:
Destinies has everything, a fascinating plot with absorbing adventures and romance, imagery that brings the story to life and interesting characters. I was up all night reading it. The story of Christian and the Rhinelander settlers is particularly well done. The fact that the story is based on historical events just makes it even more compelling. I look forward to much more from this author
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