The Gold Ball — Hanne Marie Svendsen

THE GOLD BALL ~~ "The story she tells is part epic family chronicle and part the life and death of an enchanted world - an island off the coast of Denmark - and its generations of inhabitants over the last four centuries, all of them descended from the heroic, extraordinary Niels Gloe. It is a story that began when Gloe - distant kin of the last lord of the island's long destroyed castle - proclaimed himself heir to the island and abducted a woman from the mainland, determined and destined to repopulate and conquer the virtually deserted paradise. It is the story told by Maja Stina, a woman in search of these ancestors, and most particularly of her namesake; Niels Gloe's granddaughter, who possessed magical powers, who lived and died and was reborn, and around whose neck hangs the gold ball - the gleaming sphere through which passes the magic and mystery of Svendsen's tale".