Matilda's Secret

In pre-WWII Sweden, fate and secrets change an impetuous young woman’s life in a novel of deception, true love, and reinvention by the bestselling author of The Inheritance of Lion Hall.

Sweden, 1931. Matilda Wallin has a future in Stockholm: business college, then establishing a company with the young man she plans to marry. It’s all upended by her mother’s death—and a stranger who has been appointed her guardian. Matilda has no idea who Countess Agneta Lejongård is or why this aristocrat has taken an interest in her. Agneta summons Matilda to live with her and her family on their magnificent country estate but remains mysterious about her connection to Matilda. Torn from her previous life and its promises, Matilda has no choice but to follow Agneta to venerated Lion Hall.

At first resistant to rural aristocratic life, Matilda tries to adjust. In Agneta’s son Ingmar, Matilda finds a new friend. In Ingmar’s twin brother, Magnus, she finds a churl who dismisses her as an interloper beneath his family’s stature. But just as the estate and Agneta’s benevolence win Matilda’s heart, she discovers the secret that ties her to the Lejongårds in ways she never imagined, which could change her life once again. Now, Matilda must make a decision: return to Stockholm and the commitments of her heart or take a risk on the unknown at Lion Hall.

Corina Bomann is the bestselling author of The Inheritance of Lion Hall, Butterfly Island, and The Moonlit Garden as well as a number of successful young adult novels. Her books have been translated into many languages and have been on bestseller lists in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. All the books in her Lion Hall trilogy went straight to the top of the bestseller list in Germany upon release. Bomann was born in Parchim, in northeastern Germany, and now lives with her family in Berlin.

Michael Meigs reviews theatre and translates literature from French, German, Spanish, and Swedish. He was awarded the 2011 translation prize of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the American Translators Association’s 2020 Lewis Galantière Award for distinguished translation of a book-length literary work. Since 2008 he has published the online journal CTX Live Theatre, which is dedicated to live narrative theatre in Austin, San Antonio, and the rest of Central Texas. He served for more than thirty years as a diplomat with the US Department of State and was assigned abroad in Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. He has graduate degrees in comparative literature, business, economics, and national security studies, and he is on the boards of Gilbert & Sullivan Austin and the Austin Area Translators and Interpreters Association. He is also a member of the American Literary Translators Association, the American Translators Association, and Swedish Translators in North America.