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Informationen zum Autor Ann Hood is the author of the middle grade novel How I Save My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) ! and has written several adult novels! including The Obituary Writer! An Orinthologist's Guide to Life ! The Knitting Circle ! Comfort ! and The Red Thread . Her work has appeared in the The Paris Review! O! and elsewhere. Chapter One Great-Uncle Thorne smiled at Maisie and Felix, his blue eyes twinkling in a way they had never seen before. He actually looked, Maisie realized with surprise, happy. “My only regret,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, “is that I cannot go with you.” “Go?” Felix asked, immediately anxious. “Go where?” Great-Uncle Thorne’s smile widened. “Why, to Imperial Russia,” he said, surprising Maisie once again. Ordinarily, he would have called Felix a dolt for not figuring out what always seemed so obvious to Great-Uncle Thorne, and so not obvious to Maisie and her brother. “Is that different from regular Russia?” Hadley asked. The Ziff twins, having delivered the message from Amy Pickworth, still sat together on the love seat, waiting for further instructions. Great-Uncle Thorne shook his head sadly. “What has happened to education?” he asked, his gaze sweeping up to the ceiling as if he might find an answer there. “My sister and I were taught right here at Elm Medona by brilliant tutors. Latin. French. The classics. And, of course, history.” He chuckled, still staring at the ceiling and its twinkling white lights. “Our history teacher was a Yale man, Mr. Franklin Smith. Of course, he let Maisie and me call him Smitty. Got a kick out of that, actually. Smitty appeared every morning at eleven, vaguely disheveled but always with his Yale tie and a straw boater.” “A straw boat?” Maisie asked, but Great-Uncle Thorne ignored her. “Up to the Map Room he’d march us—” “The Map Room?” Maisie interrupted. She had poked in every corner of Elm Medona. She’d opened closets and stepped inside. She’d stood in many of the rooms that never got used and whose names no one seemed to know. Of course she’d been surprised by the Fairy Room, but it was secret, hidden. “There’s no Map Room in Elm Medona,” Maisie said certainly. Now Great-Uncle Thorne frowned at her. “Of course there’s a Map Room. And you and your coterie should obviously spend some time in it. If you did, you would know that Imperial Russia was so enormous that when it was night in the west, it was dawn on the Pacific. And that the land that stretched between made up one-sixth of all the land in the world. And that land was ruled by one man. The Tsar of Imperial Russia.” “Show us,” Felix said, his mind already trying to conjure such an immense country. “Take us to the Map Room and show us.” Great-Uncle Thorne considered Felix’s request. The children, their eyes on him, waited hopefully. “I suppose if you’re going there, you should understand a bit about what you’re getting into,” he said thoughtfully. “Getting into?” Felix repeated. “You mean it’s dangerous there?” Great-Uncle Thorne shrugged. “Actually, Maisie and I never had the pleasure of visiting Imperial Russia. It is the one place that our father warned us against. Of course, I’m sure that was because of what happened there in 1918 . . .” He paused. “If we couldn’t get back here and got stuck with the family . . .” He paused again. Maisie and Felix sneaked a glance at each other. “Not to worry!” Great-Uncle Thorne said finally, with too much bravado. “You’ll get back without a hitch. Why wouldn’t you?” “Why wouldn’t we?” Maisie asked. “Why did Phinneas Pickworth fear you and Great-Aunt Maisie wouldn’t be able to return?” Great-Uncle Thorne’s face softened. “I believe it was just the love of a fath Zusammenfassung Ann Hood’s...
