Croutier, Alev Lytle

When French winemaker Casimir de Chateauneuf visits a small shop in Paris, he discovers the portrait of a beautiful woman with different colored eyes. Becoming entranced with the image, Casimir leaves his family and job to travel to Egypt to find the painter and the woman.

While trying to help her financially destitute family, twelve-year-old Leyla ends up on a slave ship bound for Istanbul, then in the beautiful Topkapi Palace, where she discovers that life in the sheltered world of the palace harem follows its own rigid rules and rhythms and offers her unexpected opportunities during Turkey's brief Tulip Period of the 1720's.