From the author of the breakout bestseller The Kitchen Boy, a new novel delving into the mysterious life and death of the notorious Rasputin

With the same riveting historical narrative that made The Kitchen Boy a national bestseller and a book-club favorite, Robert Alexander returns to revolutionary Russia for the harrowing tale of Rasputin's final days as told by his youthful and bold daughter, Maria. Interrogated by the provisional government on the details of her father's death, Maria vividly recounts a politically tumultuous Russia, where Rasputin's powerful influence over the throne is unsettling to all levels of society and the threats to his life are no secret. With vast conspiracies mounting against her father, Maria must struggle with the discovery of Rasputin's true naturehis unbridled carnal appetites, mysterious relationship with the empress, rumors of involvement in secret religious cultsto save her father from his murderers. Swept away in a plot much larger than the death of one man, Maria finds herself on the cusp of the Russian Revolution itself. With Rasputin's Daughter, Robert Alexander once again delivers an imaginative and compelling story, fashioned from one of history's most fascinating characters who, until now, has been virtually unexplored in fiction.

"In an endeavor similar to his debut novel, The Kitchen Boy, Alexander couples extensive research and poetic license, this time turning his enthusiasm toward perhaps the most intriguing player in the collapse of the Russian dynasty: Rasputin. This eyebrow-raising account of the final week of the notorious mystic's life is set in Petrograd in December 1916 and narrated by Rasputin's fiery teenage daughter, Maria. The air in the newly renamed capital is thick with dangerous rumors, many concerning Maria's father, whose close relationship with the monarchy — he alone can stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac heir to the throne — invokes murderous rage among members of the royal family. Maria is determined to protect her father's life, but the further she delves into his affairs, the more she wonders: who, exactly, is Rasputin? Is he the holy man whose genuine ability to heal inspires a cult of awed penitents, or the libidinous drunkard who consumes 12 bottles of Madeira in a single night, the unrestrained animal she spies '[eagerly] holding [the] housekeeper by her soft parts'? Does this unruly behavior link him to an outlawed sect that believes sin overcomes sin? The combination of Alexander's research and his rich characterizations produces an engaging historical fiction that offers a Rasputin who is neither beast nor saint, but merely, compellingly human." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Few royal families have provoked more persistent speculation than that of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar. Robert Alexander, the pseudonym of R.D. Zimmerman, a Minneapolis-based writer of mysteries, first tapped into the appetite for all things Romanov with his novel 'The Kitchen Boy,' an enthusiastic reimagining of the doomed family's last days as related by a young servant who witnesses their execution.... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) While the kitchen boy's actual archival footprint is faint at best, Alexander's latest addition to the Romanov franchise, the novel 'Rasputin's Daughter,' takes as its narrator someone who in fact played a significant supporting role: Maria Rasputin, the daughter of the man whose name became synonymous with the royal family's downfall.

Trustworthy accounts are a precious and rare commodity when it comes to a figure as steeped in legend as Grigori Rasputin. During his lifetime, the semi-illiterate self-styled holy man from Siberia with the wild beard and eerily pale eyes enjoyed virtually unparalleled access to Nicholas and his German-born wife, Alexandra, thanks to his shamanistic ability to halt the bleeding of their hemophiliac son through prayer. The czarina was passionately devoted to 'Our Friend' and deferred to his judgment on everything from court and church appointments to foreign affairs. With Russia's entry into World War I, Rasputin became a lightning rod for allegations of secrets being leaked to Germany at the highest levels.

Matters weren't helped by his widely rumored sexual excesses and allegiance to the Khlysty, or flagellants, a Russian Orthodox sect that sought to achieve grace through ecstatic (many said orgiastic) rituals. Monarchists exploited his grisly reputation to demand a cleansing of the Winter Palace, while liberals and communists manipulated it to advance their causes. Even after Rasputin was murdered in December 1916, less than three months before the abdication of the czar, the myth of the 'holy devil' continued to grow. Poisoned and riddled with bullets, the story went, the man just wouldn't die until submerged under the river's winter ice. Indeed, the details of his end were embellished and reinterpreted to further so many aims that the truth, whatever it is, might very well be the least compelling version.

Rasputin fanatics — and there are many — dream of discovering some untapped source like the missing interrogation transcripts recently unveiled in Edvard Radzinsky's biography 'The Rasputin File.' Those transcripts, compiled from interviews with czarist leaders in the immediate wake of Nicholas' abdication, disappeared for decades after the Bolshevik revolution before finally turning up at Sotheby's in 1995. Alexander relies significantly on Radzinsky's version of events for his fictionalization of Rasputin's murder, adopting Radzinsky's solution to the simmering debate as to who actually fired the final shots and using as a central device of his novel the interrogation of Maria by no less a luminary than the poet Alexander Blok, who did, in fact, take part in editing the transcripts.

Zeroing in on the week leading up to Rasputin's murder, Alexander has the desperate Maria shadow her father on his scandalous pursuits. 'In my father's life it was as impossible to tell who was a friend as who was a lover, let alone who was an enemy,' she says. Scrutinizing those closest to her father for signs of betrayal, she hides behind a closet door as he undresses a female petitioner, accompanies him to the royal palace when he is summoned to stanch the czarevitch's hemorrhaging, averts her eyes upon discovering a fantastically wealthy young nobleman in her father's bed and questions his dwindling circle of devotees about the plots being hatched against his life, only to learn more than she ever wanted to know about that tenuous line between sin and salvation that marks the extremes of Russian religious thought.

For readers who like their juicy scandals topped with a hearty dollop of history, Alexander serves up a satisfying portrait of a court in its last throes of decadence and intrigue. More often than not, though, his trademark eyewitness narrator emerges as the least believable ingredient. The credibility of Maria's testimony is punctured by unlikely mini-lectures on everything from Peter the Great's imperial vision to the history of the Orthodox Church. In real life, Maria Rasputin, unlike Alexander's kitchen boy, went on to become a personage in her own right. Emigrating from Russia after the revolution, she danced in a Paris cabaret, toured America as a lion tamer in a circus and had plenty to say about her father in a memoir of her own, bringing decades of context to the story. In Alexander's novel, however, she is endowed with that hindsight at just 18 years of age, giving her voice a bit of a History Channel ring. 'What could I say about my father, the greatest of all Russian enigmas?' she asks portentously. Turning to Maria for the final word, Alexander only deepens this 'greatest of all Russian enigmas,' which, given Rasputin's own penchant for mystery and myth, just might be the right approach. The most intriguing riddles, after all, are those that remain unsolved."

Reviewed by Rebecca Reich, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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From the author of "The Kitchen Boy" comes a new novel delving into the mysterious life and death of the notorious Rasputin--as explored by his youthful and bold daughter Maria.

Robert Alexander is the author of the bestselling novel The Kitchen Boy. He has traveled to Russia for nearly thirty years and since 1990 has been a partner in a St. Petersburg company that operates a variety of businesses.