Dora

Johanna Spyri's Dora opens in Karlsruhe with a heartbreaking portrait of love, faith, and loss. Eleven-year-old Dora adores her ailing father, Major Falk, whose gentle walks beneath the linden trees become quiet lessons in courage, gratitude, and trust in God. As his strength fades, he prepares her for life without him, only for Dora to find him dead and her world shattered. Left in the care of her anxious Aunt Ninette and scholarly Uncle Titus, she is given a strict routine of school and sewing, her bright spirit dimmed by loneliness, yet sustained by prayer, memory, and the stars outside her window. When Uncle Titus's health fails, the family moves Dora to the Swiss village of Tannenberg, where a calmer life slowly opens. There the narrative widens to the Birkenfeld household, where the longing for friendship leads to a moving tale of a lost childhood companion, Lili, and a poem half remembered across decades. Around these tender recollections, the novel also captures the rhythms of village and family life, from Battist's watchful stewardship to a restless child's comic attempts at mischief. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.