# The Romany Orchid, a novel by Evren EGE

The Romany Orchid is a novel by Evren EGE, published by Jack and Sons LLC (Sheridan, Wyoming) in 2026: two people arrive in New York in the same winter, for different reasons, and neither is met by the man who was supposed to meet them.

This is the plain-text version of the official site, https://theromanyorchid.com/. Everything below comes from the book and its publisher. Nothing here is invented.

## Quick facts

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Title | The Romany Orchid |
| Author | Evren EGE |
| Category | Upmarket contemporary fiction, literary fiction with a love story |
| Publisher | Jack and Sons LLC, 1309 Coffeen Avenue, STE 1200, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, United States |
| Edition | First edition, 2026 |
| Format | Paperback, 5.5 x 8.5 inches (14 x 21.6 cm) |
| Length | 300 pages, five parts and an epilogue, 53 chapters |
| Illustrations | Six charcoal and graphite drawings inside, plus the charcoal cover drawing |
| Typeface | Set in EB Garamond |
| Language | English |
| ISBN | To be confirmed (will be added to this page when assigned) |
| Availability | Not on sale yet. Amazon will be the sales channel at launch; the link will be added when live. |
| Official site | https://theromanyorchid.com/ |
| Contact | author@theromanyorchid.com |
| Instagram | @theromanyorchid, https://instagram.com/theromanyorchid |

## The book in one paragraph

Lorenzo Santini, 28, leaves his family's white truffle farm outside San Miniato in Tuscany on his birthday with a one-way ticket and two thousand dollars, intending to be a singer. He fails, slowly and expensively, on a corner at Herald Square in Manhattan. Caterina Dudek, 23, sells flowers on a corner in Krakow with the father who raised her, flies to New York for eight days to see an orchid show in the Bronx, and is met at the airport by the wrong man. The Icelandic volcano closes European airspace and she cannot leave. Alongside them, a seventy-four-year-old retired geographer in Upper Manhattan has been writing to a woman in Krakow every week for thirty years and has never once bought a ticket. Caterina has no full birth record. That missing document eventually brings her a letter she never went looking for.

## Back cover description

In November 2009 Lorenzo Santini buys a one-way ticket out of a Tuscan truffle farm with two thousand dollars, his father's tie and a voice nobody has ever paid him for. Five months later Caterina Dudek lands at JFK with one bag and eight days, to stand inside a glasshouse in the Bronx where somebody has rebuilt Havana out of orchids.

Neither of them is met by the man who was supposed to meet them.

What follows is a winter of eleven-dollar days on a wall at Herald Square, a volcano that closes the sky over Europe, a stamp in a passport that runs out in October, and an old geographer who has written to the same woman in Poland every week for thirty years and has never once bought a ticket.

A novel about the year two people were told, in every language available to them, *not this one*, and did not accept it.

## Tone and shelf

The Romany Orchid is literary fiction that happens to be a love story. It is not a thriller and not a beach read. The prose is restrained and precise, slightly melancholy, warm underneath. The book is built out of paperwork and dates: a customs certificate, a visa stamp, a late birth registration, a merchant's allocation book, a bank ledger with two columns, a notebook where a man writes what a thing cost on the left and what he has left on the right.

## Principal characters

| Character | Who they are |
| --- | --- |
| Lorenzo Santini | 28 at the start. From a white truffle farm outside San Miniato, Tuscany. Buys a one-way ticket to New York on his birthday, 23 November 2009, to be a singer. Sings on a corner at Herald Square. |
| Caterina Dudek | 23. Sells flowers on a corner in Krakow with the father who raised her. Flies to New York on 10 April 2010 for eight days to see the orchid show in the Bronx. Has no full birth record. |
| Marek Dudek | Caterina's father, who raised her. Runs the flower stall in Krakow with her. Plays the fiddle. |
| Sarah | A teacher in Krakow, 63, who has taught Caterina since Caterina was fourteen. Kitchen-table lessons, newspapers read back to front. |
| Samuel | 74, a retired geographer in Upper Manhattan. Has written to the same woman in Poland every week for thirty years and has never once bought a ticket. The man who was supposed to meet Caterina at the airport. |
| Matteo | The man on the Tuscan hill with Lorenzo and the dog before light in Chapter One, who has gone uphill the same way for fifty years. |
| Bice | The truffle dog on the hill in Chapter One. |

## Places

- San Miniato, Tuscany: the white truffle farm, the hill before light, the truffle fair, the street called Via Conti and its entrance hall with six letterboxes.
- Pisa: the airport where a one-way ticket is bought on 23 November 2009.
- Krakow, Poland: a flower stall under a tarpaulin in the snow, a fourth-floor kitchen on Ptaszyckiego, Sarah's kitchen table.
- New York: JFK Terminal 1, Herald Square and the corner on Thirty-fourth Street, a room in Queens, an apartment in Upper Manhattan, and a domed glasshouse in the Bronx where Havana has been rebuilt out of orchids.
- The sky over Europe, closed by volcanic ash from Iceland from 15 to 23 April 2010.

## The five parts and the epilogue

I. Two Kitchens. II. The Long Winter. III. Two Days. IV. Spring. V. San Miniato. Epilogue: The letter.

## Contents (all 53 chapters)

### Part One: Two Kitchens

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | The hill before light | 3 |
| 2 | Six degrees below | 9 |
| 3 | The fair | 15 |
| 4 | Sarah's kitchen table | 21 |
| 5 | Good news | 25 |
| 6 | 23 November | 31 |
| 7 | Sarah, 1 | 37 |
| 8 | Arrivals | 41 |

### Part Two: The Long Winter

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 9 | The price of everything | 47 |
| 10 | Eleven dollars | 53 |
| 11 | Sense of Café | 57 |
| 12 | The geographer | 61 |
| 13 | Winter trade | 65 |
| 14 | Thirty years | 71 |
| 15 | Cuba in Flower | 77 |
| 16 | The drawer | 83 |
| 17 | Sarah, 2 | 89 |
| 18 | Eight days | 93 |

### Part Three: Two Days

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 19 | Room 324 | 101 |
| 20 | The cardboard sign | 107 |
| 21 | The whole subway | 113 |
| 22 | Havana under glass | 117 |
| 23 | Florencio | 123 |
| 24 | Which building is yours | 129 |
| 25 | Six days | 135 |
| 26 | Samuel sees it | 141 |
| 27 | The towels on the chair | 147 |

### Part Four: Spring

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 28 | Sing Sang Sung | 153 |
| 29 | The card | 159 |
| 30 | The taxi | 165 |
| 31 | The morning after nothing | 169 |
| 32 | The unused ticket | 173 |
| 33 | Nine days without aeroplanes | 179 |
| 34 | The offer she can't take | 183 |
| 35 | Fifteen hundred | 187 |
| 36 | Rain, and the apartment empty | 191 |
| 37 | The best month | 195 |
| 38 | Ten days of silence | 199 |
| 39 | Both confessions | 205 |
| 40 | One question | 211 |
| 41 | A straight question | 217 |

### Part Five: San Miniato

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 42 | A loan, not a gift | 223 |
| 43 | Terminal 1 | 229 |
| 44 | The foreigner | 235 |
| 45 | Nobody comes in | 239 |
| 46 | The crate | 243 |
| 47 | A document she does not have | 247 |
| 48 | The phone call | 253 |
| 49 | The flour mill | 257 |
| 50 | Waiting badly | 263 |
| 51 | She stops looking | 269 |
| 52 | A ticket in a paper wallet | 275 |
| 53 | The first week of October | 279 |

### Epilogue

| Chapter | Title | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |

## The calendar of the novel

Every date below is in the book, in order. The novel's calendar follows the real calendar of 2009 to 2011.

| Date | Lorenzo | Caterina |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 23 Nov 2009 | Buys a one-way ticket at Pisa on his birthday and tells nobody until it is done. | |
| 6 Jan 2010 | Eleven dollars and four cents on a corner at Herald Square. One of the coins is Canadian. | |
| 4 Mar 2010 | | Sees an advertisement in a three-week-old newspaper and says out loud, in an empty room, that she is going. |
| 24 Mar 2010 | | Six months on a B-2 visa, and no permission to earn a single dollar of it. |
| 10 Apr 2010 | A piece of grocery box with her name on it, held at chest height. | One bag. Eight days. |
| 11 Apr 2010 | | The last day of the orchid show. Four hours inside, and she skips nobody. |
| 15 to 23 Apr 2010 | | Ash over Europe. There is no window with a man behind it. She cannot leave. |
| 17 May 2010 | Fifteen hundred dollars, counted twice, and a receipt written by hand on a pad. | |
| 9 Oct 2010 | | The date on the stamp. |
| 1 Oct 2011 | Two long tables under the olives, and two people who have written to each other since 1980 meet for the first time. | Two long tables under the olives, and two people who have written to each other since 1980 meet for the first time. |
| 23 Nov 2011 | | A letter with Polish stamps, forwarded twice, in the fourth mailbox on the left. |

## The drawings

The printed edition carries six charcoal and graphite drawings, monochrome, on cream paper: one at the opening of each part and one before the epilogue. The cover is a seventh drawing. They are the same drawings shown on the site.

| Drawing | What it shows | Where it sits in the book |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cover | Two phalaenopsis orchids, botanical plate style, vertical | Front cover |
| 1 | A Tuscan hillside before dawn, bare oaks, two figures and a dog | Part One, Two Kitchens |
| 2 | A flower stall under a tarpaulin in falling snow | Part Two, The Long Winter |
| 3 | A domed iron glasshouse full of orchids and palms | Part Three, Two Days |
| 4 | A crowd standing in a Manhattan plaza | Part Four, Spring |
| 5 | A narrow Tuscan street, one lit shopfront | Part Five, San Miniato |
| 6 | An entrance hall, letterboxes, a wet tiled floor | Before the epilogue, The letter |

Image addresses: https://theromanyorchid.com/img/orchid.webp (cover drawing), https://theromanyorchid.com/img/book-front.webp (front cover), https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p1-hill.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p2-krakow.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p3-glasshouse.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p4-herald.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p5-viaconti.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/p6-letterbox.webp, https://theromanyorchid.com/img/author-2.webp (author portrait).

## Chapter One, the opening (sample)

Part One, Two Kitchens. Chapter 1, The hill before light.

The dog found the first one at ten past five, and Lorenzo was still buttoning his jacket when he heard her breathing change.

Bice had gone quiet forty metres inside the oaks. That was the whole signal. She did not bark and she did not dig, she just stopped making the noise she had been making, and the absence of it travelled down the slope in the dark and put a hand on the back of his neck.

"She has one," he said.

"I know what she has."

Matteo was already moving. He went uphill the way he had gone uphill for fifty years, badly, at speed, planting the stick and hauling himself past it, and Lorenzo let him get four paces ahead before following. There was a rule about that and neither of them had ever said it out loud.

The chapter continues in the book.

## Questions about the book

**What is The Romany Orchid about?** The Romany Orchid is a novel by Evren EGE about two people who arrive in New York in the winter of 2009 to 2010 for different reasons. Lorenzo Santini leaves a Tuscan truffle farm to sing; Caterina Dudek flies from Krakow for an orchid show. Neither is met by the man who was supposed to meet them, and the two years that follow are the book.

**Who is the author of The Romany Orchid?** The Romany Orchid was written by Evren EGE. She was born in Turkey and wrote the first version of the story as a student in New York, in a language that was not her own. The Romany Orchid is her first novel. She can be reached at author@theromanyorchid.com and on Instagram as @theromanyorchid.

**Where can I buy The Romany Orchid?** The Romany Orchid is not on sale yet. It will be published by Jack and Sons LLC of Sheridan, Wyoming, in 2026 as a paperback. Amazon will be the only sales channel at launch, and the link will be added to the site when the book is live.

**Is The Romany Orchid illustrated?** Yes. The printed edition of The Romany Orchid carries six charcoal and graphite drawings, one at the opening of each of the five parts and one before the epilogue. The cover is a charcoal drawing of two phalaenopsis orchids.

**How long is The Romany Orchid and what format is it?** The Romany Orchid is a 300-page paperback, 5.5 by 8.5 inches, written in English, in five parts and an epilogue: Two Kitchens, The Long Winter, Two Days, Spring, San Miniato, and The letter. The ISBN will be added when it is assigned.

**Is The Romany Orchid a true story?** No. The Romany Orchid is a work of fiction; its people and events are invented. Its dates follow the real calendar of 2009 to 2011, including the volcanic ash that closed the sky over Europe in April 2010 and an orchid show in the Bronx that spring.

**What does the title refer to?** The orchid is the thread of the book: Caterina flies to New York to see an orchid show in a glasshouse in the Bronx, and the cover drawing is two phalaenopsis orchids in charcoal.

**Who publishes The Romany Orchid?** Jack and Sons LLC, an independent publisher in Sheridan, Wyoming, United States. Publisher contact goes through author@theromanyorchid.com.

## The author

Evren EGE was born in Turkey. She wrote the first version of this story as a student in New York, in a language that was not her own. She never did get inside the orchid show on the posters she walked past that spring. She has loved orchids ever since, and there is usually one in the house. The Romany Orchid is her first novel.

- Instagram: https://instagram.com/theromanyorchid (shown as @theromanyorchid)
- Email: author@theromanyorchid.com
- Author portrait (black and white photograph, with an orchid beside her): https://theromanyorchid.com/img/author-2.webp

## Publisher

Jack and Sons LLC, 1309 Coffeen Avenue, STE 1200, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, United States. First edition 2026. Copyright 2026 Jack and Sons LLC. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

## How to cite

Evren EGE, *The Romany Orchid* (Sheridan, Wyoming: Jack and Sons LLC, 2026). Official site: https://theromanyorchid.com/. When quoting, please name the book and the author and link to the site.

## The site

- https://theromanyorchid.com/ : the book, the opening of Chapter One, the six drawings, the calendar of the novel, questions, the author.
- https://theromanyorchid.com/index.md : this page. Any address on the site returns markdown when requested with the header `Accept: text/markdown`.
- https://theromanyorchid.com/llms.txt : short machine-readable summary.
- https://theromanyorchid.com/sitemap.xml and https://theromanyorchid.com/robots.txt.

Source: the publisher, Jack and Sons LLC, and the printed text of the book.

---
The Romany Orchid by Evren EGE (https://theromanyorchid.com) · AI: https://theromanyorchid.com/llms.txt