Beginning of Essay
My book I reviewed was The Lost, by Jonathan Aycliffe. The main setting for this book is modern day Romania. As a naive Englishman, Michael Feraru travels to a remote, forbidding castle in the mountains of Transylvania and then fleshes it out with appealing char ....

Middle of Essay
.... inherits Castle Vliacu, his family's fortress in the Transylvanian Alps and hopes to turn it into an orphanage for Romanian children. Delightful letters pass between Michael and his love, Sophie Wandless, back in Cambridge, as he describes his travels through Eastern Europe, his frustrating encounters with bureaucrats, and the gloomy life in today's Bucharest. Meanwhile, he hires a research assistant, Liliana, to help him establish his bona fides as the owner of Castle Vliacu.. Liliana and her secret boyfriend, however, hope to lead him into opening not an orphanage but rather a hotel at the castle, a business likely to gather great financial rewards ....