The seven sisters : a novel
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (page 461).

"Maia D'Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, 'Atlantis'--a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva--having been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as infants, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage--a clue that takes Maia, the eldest, across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to piece together the story of her own life's beginnings. Eighty years earlier, in the Rio of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio's newly wealthy father has aspirations for his beautiful daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find a sculptor capable of completing his vision. Izabela--passionate and longing to see the world--convinces her father to allow her to accompany the da Silva Costa family to Europe before she is married off to a man whom she hardly knows. In Paris, at Paul Landowski's studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again. In this beguiling, entrancing novel, Lucinda Riley brings vividly to life two extraordinary women whose intertwining stories, set decades apart, are a reminder of the courage it takes to accept love when it is offered." -- From dust jacket.