The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (41 page)
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Authors: Helen Grant
Baron Münchhausen
(Chapter One) was an eighteenth-century German baron renowned for his extravagant tall tales.
Frau Holle
(Chapter Twenty-one) is a character from a German fairy tale. She is an old woman who lives down a well; she rewards her hardworking servant girl with a shower of gold and her lazy servant with a shower of pitch.
Decke Tönnes
(Chapter Twenty-nine) is a shrine to St. Anthony, located high on a hill in the woods near Bad Münstereifel.
Karneval
(Chapter Six) is the carnival season, which starts on November 11 but reaches its climax on Rosenmontag, the Monday before Ash Wednesday. Karneval is celebrated by
Sitzungen
, which are shows incorporating dancing, singing, and comedy turns, and also by Karneval processions, which take place on or around Rosenmontag.
Kristallnacht
(Chapter Thirty-three), November 9–10, 1938, was the infamous night during which the Nazis murdered and deported Jewish people living in Germany, and ransacked thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. The name Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) refers to the huge amount of broken glass from shopwindows.
The
Ruhrgebiet
(Chapter Twenty-four) is a heavily industrialized area associated with coal mining and steel production. It belongs to the same German state as Bad Münstereifel (North Rheinland Westphalia) but lies north of the Eifel.
I would like to thank Camilla Bolton of the Darley Anderson Agency for her support, encouragement, and honesty. I would also like to thank Kate Burke Miciak, vice president, editorial director of Bantam Books/Delacorte Press, for her unbounded enthusiasm and vision. Thanks are due to my husband, Gordon, for his unflagging support and for believing in
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
right from the beginning. Last but not least I would like to thank all my friends in Bad Münstereifel, for helping me to learn so much about the history, legends, and culture of the Eifel.
H
ELEN
G
RANT
was born in London. She read classics at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of traveling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and while exploring the legends of this beautiful town she was inspired to write her first novel. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children, and a small German cat. Delacorte will publish her second novel,
The Glass Demon
.
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Helen Grant
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
ELACORTE
P
RESS
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books, an imprint of the Penguin Group, a division of Penguin Books Ltd., London, in 2009.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grant, Helen
The vanishing of Katharina Linden: a novel / Helen Grant.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33961-8
1. Missing children—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Investigation—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6107.R368V36 2010
823′.92—dc22
2010003415
v3.0