The Portuguese Lady's Earrings

The Portuguese Lady's Earrings covers the rich tapestry of the de Oliveira Evora family. Their rise to power and wealth began with their role in the Portuguese Empire, the Church predominantly through Jesuits, and with military regimes. Jewish money financed the family's business from the spice trade to trading people and ownership of sugar plantations in Brazil.

In 1940, Portugal was under the dictatorship of President Antonio de Oliveira Salazar who was ambivalent about Jewish refugees flooding Lisbon. Sitting on the Atlantic, the City on the Tagus from where explorers launched the 'Age of Discovery' became a perfect port to flee from the Nazis.

The Establishment de Oliveira Evora family remained well entrenched in the business community and to a lesser extent with the Salazar government. It, however, maintained a strong relationship with the country's centuries old established, successful and integrated Jewish community.

Follow Lia Maria who entwines herself with Tascha, a Jewish architectural student from Odessa; Olga Sara, the child of Tascha and Lia Maria, who is reared by her great uncle in Sao Paulo, Brazil after her mother disappears in Madeira; and Olga Sara's son Carlos, born out of wedlock, who is sent to boarding school in England.

The Portuguese Lady's Earrings elaborates on the secrecy that surrounds the family's historical relationship with the Jewish community and indeed Olga Sara's heritage.