Germany, 1912. Greta Zolner has never known a life that belonged to her.
The eldest daughter of an impoverished farmer in a small German village, Greta rises before dawn, works without thanks, and is beaten when she steps out of line. Her younger sister — beautiful, golden-haired, and endlessly indulged — receives everything Greta is denied. The only light in her life is her friend Ruth, a young Jewish girl from the local library who shares her love of books. In Ruth’s warm, loving home, beneath the gentle care of her bubbie, Greta finds something she thought she’d lost forever—a place to belong.
When Greta falls in love with Hermann Weber, a warm-hearted vendor with a sincere soul, she allows herself to imagine a different future. Her father ends it with a belt.
In Berlin, the Lang family has a problem. Ludwig Lang — charming, reckless, and utterly without conscience — has shot a man dead in a card game. His father buys his freedom, then issues a demand: Ludwig must marry a respectable country girl, someone too innocent to know his reputation. Greta is selected.
She arrives at a grand Berlin house to find a husband who barely registers her existence and a household full of unspoken rules. What she does not yet know is that there is a woman watching from outside. Lily — a Jewish woman whose gentle fiancé Ludwig had beaten half to death out of wounded pride — has been watching the estate for weeks. Her fiancé is dead. And Lily has come for what she is owed.
The one person who shows Greta any warmth is Ella, the elderly cook who claims the gift of sight. One night, Ella takes Greta's hands in hers and speaks with quiet certainty.
You are not here by accident. Someday, Greta — you will save lives the world cannot afford to lose.
Set against a Germany beginning its long descent toward catastrophe, A Daughter's Duty is an emotionally immersive novel about survival, forbidden love, and the heroism of a woman who had nothing — and was chosen for everything. It is the first installment in a new multi-book saga that will carry readers from pre-war rural Germany deep into the twentieth century's darkest chapter.
For readers of women's historical fiction with emotional depth and moral complexity.
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