Twenty-two years ago, while working in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., Jordan Patterson bought a handful of antique Bohemian chandelier crystals that inspired a children’s story about a Czech orphan who becomes a Bohemian princess. She had no idea that the story would eventually take her to Prague, into the lives of European princes, princesses, counts, and baronesses displaced by war and revolution, and ultimately to another Georgetown—Georgetown, Texas—where she discovered a region shaped by generations of Czech Bohemian and Moravian immigrants. In this personal journey through history, chance encounters, and remarkable family stories, Patterson explores what survives when an old world disappears, how European dynasties reinvented themselves in America, and the unlikely path that led her back, twenty-two years later, to A True Bohemian Princess.

Jordan Patterson is the author of A True Bohemian Princess, a children’s book inspired by the true stories of European royalty who fled their homelands during the World Wars and rebuilt their lives in America. Born to American parents in Japan and raised in Connecticut, she studied business at Southern Methodist University and lived abroad in Copenhagen, Madrid, and Prague, where her research into displaced aristocratic families helped shape both her book and her docu-drama in development, Royal in America: Exiled Bloodlines. Her career has included roles with Hermès, BVLGARI, Kering, and The Ritz-Carlton, along with work supporting children through Save the Children and ChildHelp USA. A longtime SAG-AFTRA member, Patterson now lives in the heart of Texas with her husband and two children, where she continues to share remarkable stories that connect history, family, and culture.