The promise by Danielle Steel

I read this when I was 14 and I loved it. I still like it, although not as much. It's a good book with a peculiar love story. Of course the characters seem very unreal now, but that's because nowadays things are different and it's not so common to find so many good and generous people. In this book everyone's good. Even the bad one is not completely bad.

It's the story of Michael and Nancy. He's a rich and young architect, she's a painter who grew up in an orphanage. His mother Marion is a widow who dedicated her life to her work, to build a company that would be Michael's one day. She appears cold and tough, and does not approve of Nancy. Because of this the two lovers plan to run away and marry the same night she refused him her approval. Michael and Nancy are young, full of life and madly in love, but tragedy awaits. A car accident sends him in a coma and destroys her face and hands. Marion is in pain and afraid to lose her son, she needs someone to blame and she blames her. Nancy has no money, and no hope to have a life again, in her condition. Marion proposes a deal: she'll pay for everything as long as Nancy promises to never look for Michael ever again. Nancy accepts because she's sure that Michael will look for her and find her! But Marion tells him , as soon as he wakes up, that Nancy is dead. 

Neither of them ever suspected anything, for two long years Nancy had many operations to gain a new face and a new life, and had near her the love of Peter, her surgeon, and Faye, her psychiatrist and friend, while Michael focused only on his work, ignoring life and friends, having only a sex relationship that was of courses doomed from the start. 

Feeling that Michael had abandoned her, Nancy tried to start a new life with Peter, because she owed him so much, not only her face. He was always kind and supportive and he helped her start a new career as a photographer, and she changed her name to Marie, trying to forget her past life and start a new one. When Michael's company notices her pictures, Marion suspects the truth and wants to meet her. She's sick, she's tired, and feels now guilty for what she's done, after realizing how Michael withdrew from life. She doesn't reveal the truth to him for lack of courage and fear he would hate her, but tries to make amends by sending him to her, to negotiate her collaboration in their new project, as a photographer. They meet and it's very hard for Nancy/Marie. He can't recognize her, but one day he sees an old painting that he knows was Nancy's, but it's signed Marie and he understands everything, so he runs to her to clear things up. They explain the truth: her deal with Marion, made only because sure that he would find her, and his belief that she was dead, only reason why he never looked for her. Had he known she was alive he would have never stopped looking for her, he still loves her deeply and she loves him, so the book ends with their plan to marry right away, without waiting, feeling they've waited long enough already. 

The peculiarity of this book is that most of the time the two lovers are separated and trying to forget each other, to move on, alone. The unreal part is not that fate brings them back together, but the fact that everyone's so good, everyone's trying to help, and in nowadays world that is the most unbelievable thing of all.

ITA la promessa