The Astor Orphan (24 page)

Courtesy of Ania Aldrich

I
want to thank Jeanne Fleming for helping me make the necessary contacts to get this book published, and for spending endless hours on the book's photos. And Harlan Matthews for supporting me through the whole process. A big thank-you to all my editors: Ann Patty, whose editing helped make the manuscript fit to be sold; Daphne Abeel, for believing in the book's potential; Hilary Redmon of Ecco, for her brilliant insight. My agent, Joy Harris, for being a terrific advocate. My father, for sharing his great stories, and my mother, for sharing her photograph collection. And, last but not least, I am very grateful to my son, Shlomo, for being so patient with me while I wrote this book.

ALEXANDRA ALDRICH
, a direct Astor descendant, lived at Rokeby, the house at the heart of this story, until the age of fourteen, when she left to attend boarding school. She later moved to Poland, where she studied violin and history, and then back to the United States, where she taught high school English and converted to Orthodox Judaism.

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Cover design by Allison Saltzman

Illustration of girl © by Helen Cingisiz/Shutterstock

This is a work of nonfiction. Though all the characters' names have been changed, the events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as I have remembered them. In some cases, composite characters have been created and time lines have been compressed to retain narrative flow. I rendered the dialogue as accurately as I could, but as none of it was electronically recorded, I cannot guarantee that it is a word-for-word representation of conversations that took place more than twenty years ago.

T
HE ASTOR ORPHAN
. Copyright © 2013 by Alexandra Aldrich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-220793-7

EPub Edition © April 2013 ISBN: 9780062207968

Version 02282014

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