Granny Dan: A Novel
by By Steel, Danielle
Category: Fiction , Romance , Contemporary

In my eyes she had always been old, always been mine, always been Granny Dan. But  in another time, another place, there had been dancing, people, laughter, love. .  . . She had had another life before she came to us, long before she came to me. .  . .   She was the cherished grandmother who sang songs in Russian, loved to roller-skate,  and spoke little of her past. But when Granny Dan died, all that remained was a box  wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Inside, an old pair of satin toe shoes,  a gold locket, and a stack of letters tied with ribbon. It was her legacy, her secret  past, waiting to be discovered by the granddaughter who loved her but never really  knew her. It was a story waiting to be told. . . .   The year was 1902. A new century  was dawning as a motherless young girl arrived at a ballet school in St. Petersburg,  Russia, at the age of seven. By age seventeen, Danina Petroskova had become a great  ballerina, a favorite of the Czar and Czarina, who welcomed her into the heart of  the Imperial family. But events both near and far away shook the ground upon which  she danced. A war, an extraordinary man, and a devastating illness altered the course  of her life. And when revolution shattered Russia, Danina Petroskova was forced to  make a heartbreaking choice—as the world around her was about to change forever.  Granny Dan is about the magic of history. In it, Danielle Steel reminds us how little  we know of those who came before us—and how, if we could only glimpse into their  early lives, and see who they once were, there is so much we would understand and  learn. For in this extraordinary novel, a simple box, filled with mementos from a  grandmother, offers the greatest legacy of all: an unexpected gift of a life transformed,  a long-forgotten history of youth and beauty, love and dreams.