Content warning: this book has past harm to a dog (but it did not die).
The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson would today be considered Middle Grade, I think. It’s set in 1908 Austria. Infant Annika is found abandoned in a church and taken in by a Viennese cook and a housemaid, as well as the three sibling professors for whom they work. Annika is a sunny, happy child who learns everything about taking care of a house and cooking, as well as random lectures on geology and art history and music from the professors. She’s a particularly gifted cook. She has close friends with whom she acts out elaborate stories, and has connections with everyone in her neighborhood. But she also daydreams of meeting her mother one day, and having her own dog.
A selfish, spoiled neighbor girl pays Annika to read to her dying great-aunt; instead, Annika hears the old woman’s stories of her life on the stage as La Rondine, retirement with her beloved, and then penury as she slowly pawns her jewels with a jeweler friend, who replaces them with realistic replicas, which La Rondine shows to Annika. They become close, until La Rondine passes away. This will become an important plot point, as you might guess from the title of the book!
When Annika’s mother arrives at last, it’s not as joyful an occasion as Annika had imagined, because she is taken away to live in her mother’s dreary castle in Germany, where she meets her disagreeable half-brother and makes friends with a young orphaned groom named Zed. Annika tries to please her mother by not working, but can’t stop herself and spends as much time as possible with Zed, taking care of tasks out of sight. The castle is puzzlingly cold, the food is bad, and many paintings and art objects are missing. Annika is slow to understand what’s happening, but for the reader, it’s much more clear. I am happy to report that Annika’s goodness wins out in the end, she is restored to her true home, and Zed also gets his happy ending.
