The Missing Rose - Softcover

Serdar Ozkan attended Robert College in Istanbul. He completed his university education in the United States, where he earned his BA in business administration and psychology at Lehigh University. He has been a full-time novelist since 2002.

Özkan’s debut novel—an allegory about reaching one’s full potential—can be interpreted in multiple ways. Diana Oliveira is a rich young woman in Rio who dreams of being a writer—but fears being one whose books are never read. Her dying mother gives her a letter that reveals how, 24 years earlier, Diana’s father left them, taking her twin sister, Mary, with him. Diana is shocked to hear she has a sister, and when she reads a packet of letters her mother received from Mary shortly before her mother dies, Diana embarks on a quest to find her twin. She begins in Istanbul, where she meets a mysterious woman who claims to have taught Mary how to hear a rose (which was mentioned in one of Mary’s letters), a feat Diana would love to duplicate. Readers who enjoyed the messages found in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (2001) will surely enjoy Özkan’s internationally bestselling modern parable about the importance of taking time to enjoy life’s small pleasures, and how loved ones can help us find the key to our purpose in life. --Deborah Donovan