California Sweetheart

Lady Courths-Mahler - Vintage Love Stories:
In this revival of "vintage chick-lit,” there are no cell phones nor computers - but love letters that sometimes take weeks to reach their starry-eyed recipients. Suitors court their sweethearts, and gentlemen woo their ladies. Legendary German author Lady Courths-Mahler paints a portrait of magical romance, of a glimpse into the life of beautiful damsels and handsome heroes. These "fairytales for adults,” from the early 1900s have been revived from the vaults and appear now for the first time in English. Their tender charm will leave your heart singing for more.

-- Shortly before Dick Garring and Gladys Forester travel to Germany to hire a new architect for their firm, Gladys learns that her recently deceased father had embezzled money as a young accountant from a company in Berlin. With the stolen money, he moved to California and started a debt-free life with a new identity. The loss caused the Berlin firm financial ruin, and the owner committed suicide. On their trip, Dick and Gladys hire both Hans Dernburg as their new architect, and his sister, Rose Marie, as Gladys’s companion. Despite their class differences, Dick falls in love with Rose Marie, and Gladys is attracted to Hans at first sight. It isn’t until they are introduced that Gladys realizes that Hans is the son of the man from whom her father had embezzled so many years earlier. She is afraid to reveal this secret to him and it threatens to destroy any chance of happiness for Gladys and Hans.

-- The author's story could have come from one of her novels: a real fairytale like the story of Cinderella- but she did not marry the prince, she became a queen on her own. Born Ernestine Friederike Elisabeth Mahler on February 18, 1867, in the town of Nebra a.d. Unstrut, Hedwig Courths Mahler was the product of an out-of-wedlock affair. She was raised by various foster parents. She first worked as a saleswoman in Leipzig while she wrote her first seventeen novels. Between 1905 and 1939, after marrying and giving birth to two daughters, she became a highly circulated author with her Courths Mahler romance novels. But success did not come easy to the energetic young woman who originally wrote in order to feed her family. At times she sat at her desk, writing for fourteen hours a day, turning out six to eight novels each year. As the Nazis refused to publish her work, Hedwig Courths-Mahler stopped writing in 1939. When her daughter was arrested by the Gestapo, the author suffered such great agony, she never wrote again. On November 26, 1950 Hedwig Courths Mahler died on her farm at Lake Tegern without witnessing the Renaissance of her novels.