Bøker av Eleanor Cripps

Born in 1914 just prior to WWI in a small town in Austria, a young Valerie is determined to escape the modest background of her family. Early twentieth-century convention and financial circumstances limit her career choices, and she reluctantly follows her father's footsteps to become a teacher. Faced with the first real dilemma of her young life, she bravely deals with adversity and mishap, and when during her time as student she becomes familiar with the Nazi underground movement, she wisely resists joining. In March 1938, Valerie and many people in Austria are confounded by the Anschluss, Hitler's forced annexation of Austria, which renders the country part of Germany. It is during this time in her life that Valerie believes to have realized her dreams, when in September 1939, World War II breaks out, an event destined to end in worldwide cataclysm, though at the time no one thought, or dared to think, of it as such. For the first few years, the German Army is remarkably successful until hopes for a peaceful conclusion are dashed by Hitler's ruthless blunders and the Russian winter. Valerie's story closely follows the war years in historic detail through its catastrophic end, the ten-year Allied occupation and post-war challenges. Conditions gradually return to normal, and Valerie feels content with her life until she suddenly faces events that even her lifelong strength and determination cannot overcome.

This is the touching story of a vivacious, talented girl growing up in splendid freedom in Transylvania, then Hungary but now part of Rumania, until a tragic event transplants her and three older siblings to eighteenth century Vienna and the house of a cardinal, whose wards they have become. The four youngsters know they have no choice but to adjust to their drastically changed life and a demanding curriculum of studies. In time, all four teenagers are placed with religious orders and eventually take their vows. The youngest, Tessa, enters the abbey of Goss in Styria, a contemplative order of choir women from noble families, and she eventually becomes Choir woman Maria Columba. Her great talent and love of singing, especially the Gregorian chant, as well as an understanding abbess, help her adjust to the strict rules and grueling daily schedule. Over time, however, circumstances change and her always strong temper revolts against what she perceives as unjust and abhorred decisions by her superiors, causing her to be confined to a cell under prisonlike conditions. She is freed years later when Joseph II of Austria decrees the dissolution of contemplative abbeys, monasteries, and convents. Realizing that having been confined for so long was an injustice, the state grants her as the only member of the congregation the means to live out her life as a private woman.