A USA TODAY Best seller!
Four hundred years before Oskar Schindler there was Suleiman the Magnificent, an Ottoman sultan who rescued thousands of Jews from the fires of the Inquisition. Inspired by this amazing and little-known moment in history, Nicole Dweck has imagined an enchanting family saga where the kindness of one man is repaid generations later.
It’s 1544, and young José Mendez and his family escape the Inquisition in Portugal with the aid of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Yet it’s only just before fleeing that José even finds out he’s Jewish—and that his own parents died for their faith. As he makes a new life in Istanbul, he yearns to feel connected to the parents he lost, digging deeper into his Jewish roots. But when his own daughter secretly falls in love with the sultan’s Muslim son, José finds himself in a life-changing dilemma, one that will shape generations to come.
Centuries later, when Selim Osman, the last living descendant of the sultan, is diagnosed with a fatal condition, he abandons the only life he’s ever known and flees Istanbul, taking refuge in a New York hospital. In a twist of fate, he meets Hannah, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an artist striving to understand a father she barely knows. Unaware the connection they share goes back centuries, they feel an immediate pull to one another. But when something from Selim’s past comes to light, the act that bound two families centuries ago ripples into the future, threatening to tear them apart.
From the 16th-century harem to WWII Paris to modern-day New York, Nicole Dweck weaves together a spellbinding tapestry of history with transcendent love and spirituality that will absorb readers from the very first page.
The Debt of Tamar: A Novel
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The Debt of Tamar From Portugal to Istambul, to Nazi-occupied Paris and newly-established Israel, this is a sweeping saga of a novel.Inspired by the lives of Dona Gracia Nasi and her son, Josef, the book begins there – with the secret Jews and fleeing refugees of the 16th century – but then opens up, layer upon layer to unite both the Jewish and Muslim cultures. Dweck does this deftly, reeling us in and then pulling back, so that we watch the players in this drama interact up close and from afar. The…
The Heart is Good Dona Antonio Nissim daughter is being courted for marriage from the royal family. Having to keep turning them down and running out of excuses she decides to send her family away before their secret is revealed. Her daughter, Reyna and her nephew Jose have no idea that Nissim has been hiding the fact that they are Jewish. They flee to Turkey where along the journey Reyna and Jose fall in love. This is where the true story starts, with the birth of their daughter Tamar. Because the family is…