| | | |
With The Ghost of Hannah Mendes, international bestselling author Naomi Ragen is poised to embrace her largest readership ever. Wise and deeply moving, this novel raises one of our age's most profound questions: As we journey into the new millennium, should we carry with us the faith, wisdom, and rituals that nourished our ancestors -- or shed them, like so much excess baggage?
When Catherine da Costa, a wealthy Manhattan matron, learns she has only a short time to live, she realizes that the family tree will die unless she transfers its legacy to her granddaughters. But Suzanne and Francesca, beautiful young women in their twenties caught up in trendy causes and ambitious careers, have no interest either in her or in the past. Catherine almost despairs until, falling asleep before her fireplace, she is visited by the family matriarch, an indomitable Renaissance businesswoman named Hannah Mendes (a true historical figure), who offers her a partnership.
Encouraging Catherine to use every trick in the book -- bribery, guilt, and the threat of disinheritance -- to coerce her granddaughters to put their lives, in New York City on hold to journey across Europe, the ghost of Hannah Mendes promises to do her share to reacquaint the young women with their roots through the pages of an ancient manuscript -- her own handwritten memoir.
While Suzanne and Francesca are honoring their grandmother's request out of a sense of loyalty, they believe their quest is futile -- until manuscript pages begin to turn up all over Europe, along with, two mysterious, attractive men. As the women read the pages of the memoir, their lives mysteriously begin to parallel that of their ghostly ancestress until, in a final, shocking encounter, the boundaries between past and present, spirit and flesh, blur with profound consequences that will change their lives forever. And the dying wishes of Catherine da Costa are fulfilled in ways that none of her family -- not even Hannah Mendes -- believed possible.
| |
|
