The Patriarch

Vandenberg Coffee, run by Gero Vandenberg, is a huge and successful family empire. The company maintains roasting facilities and coffee plantations throughout the world. However, any appearances of a blissful, contented and fabulously wealthy family are an illusion.







Gero’s second wife Nina is an admitted alcoholic. Her drinking not only threatens to destroy their marriage, it is also damaging the relationships she has with her daughter Finja and her son Nils. In the midst of Nina’s attempts to get a handle on her alcohol problem, her husband tragically dies in a plane crash.






In the plane’s wreckage, a huge and suspicious cache of money is discovered. Now Nina must pull herself together and take charge of the business. Having always remained in the background, she isn’t at all familiar with its day-to-day operation and feels ill at ease in her new role.






To make matters worse, the authorities now suspect Nina Vandenberg of being involved in the movement of illicit funds, compelling her to flee to Africa with her daughter Finja to prove her innocence.

Once at the Vandenberg’s plantations in Kenya, Nina begins a nerve-racking search for the money that is now so necessary for the company’s survival.




Nina is convinced that only within Kenya could the money have been moved, over the years, between secret accounts. She thinks back to the massive scale on which the plantations were sold years ago, wondering if there’s a connection.








As Nina starts to make progress in discovering some of the illegal business the company is involved in, she begins to realize that it is secretly being manipulated by just a small few who remain in the background. Having been kept in the dark for so long, Nina has no idea who in her own family she can trust. It’s obvious that her stepchildren, who are attempting to take over control of the company, are not on her side.



Even her new lover Bent Peerson, a shady broker from New York, is himself a big question mark.

Compelled to discover the truth and committed to the company’s survival, Nina journeys to Kenya, Germany, Malta and New York.






Finally, based on the bits of information she’s been able to unearth, she sets a trap with the help of the only two people she has come to trust.


So close to solving the puzzle and achieving her own redemption, Nina is still dangerously unaware of the full scope of her husband’s tragic death, and who she will soon confront…