DESTINIES, a novel

Destinies

 a novel

_____________

Karleene Morrow

Published by Agate Beach Press 

Copyright © 2011 Karleene L. Morrow

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Cover design © Charlie Magee, Signal Design Inc., Eugene Oregon

ISBN 978-0-9837711-0-4

Website: http://www.karleenemorrow.com/

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

          This is a work of fact and fiction and the reader is entitled to know which is which. Catherine the Great, Count Panin, Grigorii Orlov, Gregory Potemkin and others of the royal court are portrayed as they lived. I have taken literary license with words put into their mouths. Social events are based on actual ones. Political events, letters and other documents are a matter of historic record.

There is no disagreement among historians as to Catherine having been a forceful and resourceful sovereign, a highly intellectual and educated woman. She brought broader social reform to the Russian people than any ruler who came before, including Peter the Great. In her personal life historians chose to paint her as a scarlet woman. But in the early years of her royal position many personal choices were influenced by circumstances. In later years her most notable mistakes, labeled immoral forever after, were forced upon her by Gregory Potemkin.

The child of an ambitious loveless mother and the wife of a mentally deficient boy-husband who had no emotion for her save ridicule, she suffered an inner turmoil, a low self image and a desperate need to be loved.

The story of Christian and the Rhinelanders is based on fact for the immigrants were certainly where the story places them. All characters however are invented and any similarity to actual persons living or dead is coincidental.

Many of the events described in this story did occur. Others are either fictitious or loosely based on true incidents. At Catherine’s invitation, the colonists did make the trip across the Baltic Sea, much in the way described. They did settle in and around Saratov. Their lives were similar to the lives of the characters in this book.

In Russia, Catherine is Ekatrina, translated as Katherine. I have chosen to spell her name that way rather than anglicizing it to Catherine. Similarly, Gregory Orlov has remained Grigorii, as when he lived.

Karleene Morrow

On the Coast of Oregon

                                   Prologue

St. Petersburg, Russia

1766

Elisabeth Petrovna, Empress and Autocratic Ruler of All the Russias, is robed in state; the magnificent bed on which she lies is appointed in red velvet with silver embroidery and draped by moiré silk curtains. Her own shimmering gown is of gros de Tour threaded with silver. It is one of fifteen thousand gowns imported to her wardrobe from fine German looms, for in all her vast country there is not one single weaver.