title: Echoes
author: Steel, Danielle
description: For the Wittgenstein family, the summer of 1915 was a time of both prosperity and unease, as the guns of war sound in the distance. But for eldest daughter Beata, it was a time of awakening. By glimmering Lake Geneva, the quiet Jewish beauty met a young French officer and fell in love. Knowing that her parents would never accept her marriage to a Catholic, Beata followed her heart anyway. As the two built a new life together, Beata's past would stay with her, and when Europe faces war once again, Beata must watch in horror as Hitler's terror threatens her family -- even her daughter Amadea, who has taken on the vows of a Carmelite nun.
  
  As family and friends are swept away without a trace, Amadea is forced into hiding. Thus begins a harrowing journey of survival, first in the Nazi death camps, and then as she escapes into the heart of the French Resistance and finds a renewed sense of purpose. In the darkest moments of fear, Amadea will feel her mother's loving strength as the voices of lost loved ones echo powerfully in her life. She will meet an extraordinary man, British secret agent Rupert Montgomery, who will help her discover her place in an unbreakable chain between generations...and between her lost family and her future.
  
  From the elegant rituals of Europe's prewar aristocracy to the brutal desperation of Germany's death camps, Danielle Steel draws us into a vanished world, weaving an intricate tapestry of a mother's love, a daughter's courage...and the unwavering faith that sustained them -- even in history's darkest hour.