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 taken in by the Sultan and Jose elevated to a high position in the court, Tamar is raised and educated in the harem alongside the sultans heir, Murat. Of course, these two fall in love but Jose knows that this cannot happen. He concocts a plan to send his daughter away, but not before Murat was able to give Tamar a beautiful ruby ring. Murat not knowing what happened to his love believes himself cursed which continues on until present day.

The heart of the story is good. Unfortunately the structuring was a bit confusing. There was a lot of rewinding and fast forwarding going on making it hard to connect with anyones story for very long. I did finally understand by the end when the author tied everything. The best part of this story is all the history that is intertwined in here. We get to live in 16th century Spain, Turkey, Israel, France and a glimpse into the life of an orphan of the Holocaust. That is a lot of information packed into this book and I think the author did the best that she could with it. I think it is a great start to a promising author.

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