On a large farm, located in the Andean foothills in the mid-south of Chile, Conrado was born and raised as a child and, later, a young man, whose physical and psychological characteristics differ greatly from the rest of his family and the school community. He is Germanic in appearance, blond, blue-eyed and very tall, unlike the others, whose features are those of Chileans and their Mapuche ancestors.
What, in his early years, was painful for him, due to the bullying he was subjected to at school, ends up transforming into an obsession to understand where his Nordic genes come from. He discovers, in an old trunk, which had belonged to his great-great-grandmother Frederika, who had arrived from Europe at the end of the 19th century, the first clues about his origin. Already fully involved in the knowledge of his family's past, he forges a life plan, which includes the university study of German and History, in order to reach the very source of the strange secret, which is revealed through letters and documents from his great-grandfather Ladislao Eguiguren Montalva, who had been a member of the Chilean elite in those distant times.
Little by little, the hidden facets of the arrival of his great-great-grandmother to a place so far from her native country are discovered. In his exhaustive investigation, Conrado even goes so far as to travel to Europe, to recognize the place of origin of his German family, and chance takes him first to the Mediterranean coast, where he meets the youth of the still existing rancid nobility and, in the midst of them, his Swiss-Italian cousin, who not only facilitates his family research, but also gives him her support against his father, the Duke of Starkenbach, who flatly refuses to accept the upstart as a member of his ancestral family. With her, he arrives at the family's ancestral castle in the middle of the Swiss Alps, where a past of almost pathological loves and a sordid family drama are revealed, in which the young man is involved body and soul.
To make matters better, the two young people end up falling in love and Conrad manages to free Elisabetta from her life full of excesses, as part of that European aristocratic youth.
You'll find here a deeply evocative exploration of the ways in which personal and familial identities are shaped by history, culture, and memory. Through its richly developed characters, vivid settings, and poignant themes, the novel invites readers to reflect on the legacies we inherit and the choices we make in preserving or redefining them. Ramdohr's work stands as a testament to the power of storytelling in bridging the past and the present, offering a narrative that is as universal in its emotional resonance as it is uniquely grounded in its cultural context.
