מובאות-

• From the book

  The sound of the birds outside was muffled by the heavy brocade curtains  of Henderson Manor, as Olivia Henderson pushed aside a lock of long dark  hair, and continued her careful inventory of her father's china. It was a  warm summer day and, as usual, her sister had gone off somewhere. Her  father, Edward Henderson, was expecting a visit from his lawyers. Nestled  as they were in Croton-on-Hudson, nearly a three-hour drive from New  York, his attorneys came to see him fairly often. Edward Henderson ran  all his investments from here, as well as overseeing the steel mills  which still bore his name, but which he no longer ran himself. He had  retired from business entirely, two years before, in 1911, maintaining all  his holdings, but trusting entirely in his attorneys and the men who ran  the mills for him. With no sons, he no longer had the interest in  business that he once did. His daughters would never run his steel mills.  He was only sixty-five, but his health had begun to fail over the past few years, and he preferred viewing the world from his peaceful perch in  Croton-on-Hudson. Here, he could observe the world quietly, and it was a  healthy, wholesome life for his two daughters. It was not exciting,  admittedly, but they were never bored, and they had friends among all the  grand families up and down the Hudson.
  
  The Van Cortlandt manor was nearby, as were the Shepards on the old  Lyndhurst estate. Helen Shepard's father had been Jay Gould, and he had  died twenty years before, and left the extraordinary property to his  daughter. She and her husband, Finley Shepard, ran it beautifully, and  gave frequent parties for the young people nearby. The Rockefellers had  finished building Kykuit in Tarrytown that year, with its splendid  gardens and magnificent grounds, and a house which rivaled Edward  Henderson's just north of them at Croton-on-Hudson.
  
  Henderson Manor was a handsome home, and one which people came from miles  to see, peering through the gates into the lovely gardens. They could  barely see the house from where they stood, shielded as it was by tall  trees, and little turns in the road which led to the formal driveway. The  house itself sat high on a cliff, looking over the Hudson River. And  Edward liked to sit in his study for hours, watching the world drift by,  remembering times past, old friends, and the days when his life had moved  a great deal more quickly . . . taking over his father's mills in the  1870's . . . being instrumental in the many industrial changes at the end  of the last century. His life had been so busy then. When he was younger,  his life had been so different. Edward Henderson had married when he was  young, and lost a wife and a young son to diphtheria. After that he had  been alone for many years, until Elizabeth came along. She had been  everything any man could ever dream of, a bright shining streak of light, a comet in a summer sky, so ephemeral, so dazzling, so beautiful, and so  much too quickly gone. They were married within the year they met. She  was nineteen, and he was in his early forties. By twenty-one, she was  gone. Much to Edward's horror, she had died in childbed. After her death,  he had worked even harder than usual, driving himself until he was numb.  He had left his daughters to the...

על המחבר-

• Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 560 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Sisters, H.R.H., Coming Out, The House, Toxic Bachelors, Miracle, 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.

ביקורות-

• 

  November 2, 1998
  The raven-haired twins in Steel's (The Klone and I) latest romance wend their way through the social dilemmas and crises of conscience that abound in the lives of two motherless heiresses. Flitting around Edith Wharton's New York and its fashionable countryside (the family home, Henderson Manor, is in Croton-on-Hudson), Olivia and Victoria Henderson come of age in high style and predictable prose. Their physical resemblance (even their father is unable to distinguish between them) exaggerates their temperamental differences. The rebel Victoria--smoker, drinker and suffragette--recklessly gives herself to a married womanizer, Tobias Whitticomb. Olivia dutifully keeps her father's houses and acts as the anxious guardian to her "baby" sister. She also befriends nine-year-old Geoff Dawson, whose mother has died on the Titanic. When Henderson pere decides to marry the disgraced Victoria to Geoff's father, Charles, Olivia's heart quietly breaks and the plot thickens. The convenience of the sisters' carbon-copy looks allows Victoria to run off to help the Allied cause in France and Olivia secretly to take her sister's place. Although Steel stretches credibility as the marriage heats up (Charles didn't notice that his wife was virginal again?), the reader is too busy being moved by the powerful events to quibble. Steel doesn't flinch from the realities of childbirth and war and reliably produces yet another suspenseful tearjerker.

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