Catherine seizes the crown of Russia, and a thousand miles away a Rhineland boy's life changes forever.  

Christian is whisked away from his home and propelled into a world of enigmas: a captain's daughter, a meeting with the empress, a Russian blacksmith, a band of Gypsies and the forbidden girl he can’t sweep out of his heart.
   When a Cossack raises a massive renegade army they pound toward the new colonies where Christian and the Rhinelanders are caught up in the rebel war before the army presses on in its mission to invade Moscow and to place the empress in a nunnery.
   Through ten years of her lover’s abuses, betrayals and humiliations, Catherine is a woman—tender, fragile, giving. But as she turns on the rebels and her own serfs, the great Catherine unleashes a different side of herself: unforgiving, chillingly cruel, relentless in her fierce power.
    A story readers will remember long after the final page.